Since 1999, when Rosetta won the Palme d'Or and the Prix d'interprétation for the late Emilie Dequenne, each of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's 9 other feature films has been selected to take part in the Cannes Film Festival Competition. Young Mothers [+leggi anche:
trailer
intervista: Luc e Jean-Pierre Dardenne
scheda film] is no exception to this extraordinary series, while at the same time bringing a breath of fresh air to the rich filmography of the Belgian filmmakers.

Jessica, Perla, Ariane, Julie and Naïma (Babette Verbeek, Lucie Laruelle, Janaina Halloy Fokan, Elsa Houben and Samia Hilmi) are young mothers. Very young, in fact, to the extent that they still have the energy and possibilities of childhood, and the ability to resist the determinisms that tower over them. They meet in the cocoon of the maternity home, this protected place that is as much a respite as a reprieve, where a team of dedicated educators and social workers work to facilitate, if they so wish, the creation of a link between these young women who are becoming parents even before they have finished with their childhood and their baby, just born or soon to be born. Each woman progresses along her own path, faced with her own unique choices and personal challenges, even if patterns emerge, a conflicting bond, an almost paralysing fear of repeating the same failures over and over again, sometimes handed down from generation to generation. Jess, abandoned at birth, wonders how she can love a baby if she herself has never been loved by her mother. Perla, traumatised by her mother's alcoholism, desperately dreams of a normal family, like the one her sister seems to have created. Ariane feels trapped by her mother's dreams, who wants to believe that she can achieve with her granddaughter what she failed to do with her daughter, while the young woman dreams of blossoming outside motherhood. Julie, despite Dylan's love, is plagued by inner demons and battling her addictions. Finally, Naïma is the one who seems to have found her way, ready to emancipate herself and face the outside world.

The Dardennes' cinema, far from being in the first person, is never overbearing. Without being systematic, they manage to accompany each of their heroines, with a sense of ellipsis that always avoids the spectacular and the already-seen scenes in order to focus on life, its triviality and its harshness. It's a life that's often hard, exposed without being miserable, but it's also unvarnished. We don't know whether the bit of light that fiction offers Jess, Perla, Ariane, Julie and Naïma will stand up to the army of shadows. But for the duration of the film, we lived alongside them, saw what prevents them, and the energy they deploy to free themselves from the fatality of social reproduction that threatens them; carried at arm's length by the discreet worker bees of the maternity home to give them the means to exercise, at a pivotal moment in their lives, their free will. Like a moment of shared humanity.

Young Mothers was produced by the filmmakers’ company Les Films du Fleuve, and co-produced by their longtime partner Archipel 35 in France, and in Belgium by two other brothers, Michiel and Lukas Dhont (the multi-award-winning director of Girl [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Lukas Dhont
scheda film] and Close [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Eden Dambrine
intervista: Lukas Dhont
intervista: Lukas Dhont
scheda film]), via their new company The Reunion. International sales are handled by Goodfellas. Diaphana Distribution will release the film on 23 May in France, the same day as the Cannes presentation, and Cinéart will distribute the film in the Benelux on 4 June.