FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Dardenne Brothers - La Promesse  

Belgians Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have found a way to turn human weaknesses and emotions into art. They never judge. There is neither "good" nor "evil". Instead, they show how complex life really is. Often their characters have to choose between maintaining relative social stability or risking disaster. This is at the expense of their own ability to compromise. Ultimately, it is about the struggle for morality. La Promesse is about the effort to keep a promise. A teenager promises a dying man to ensure the safety of his wife and baby. They are illegal immigrants who are exploited by the teenager's father. So the dying man is buried at the construction site without calling a doctor (while the wife desperately searches for him). Normally this would be the stuff of melodrama, but not with the Dardenne brothers. The Dardennes are much more interested in examining the milieu they present here. A study of local exploiters who employ West African workers (and get most of their wages back through overpriced rooms they provide them). La Promesse is about a son who gradually realises that his father is a monster. The portrait of an abusive father-son relationship. In 1996, the Dardennes found international attention with La Promesse and have since presented their very own cinema without pathos, but with the realisation that the act of making a painful decision is not an external show or a cinema moment. The world that influences this decision is the world of the Dardennes.