Around the selection 2009

Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne begin in the cinema as assistants to poet and director Armand Gatti. As of 1978, they directed and produced numerous documentaries about the Resistance or memory of the working class. They moved on to fiction in 1987 by adopting a stage play, Falsch, written by René Kalisky. They next shot Je pense à vous (1992), co-written by Jean Gruault, Truffaut's screenwriter. But it was with their third film, The Promise, that they found true public recognition: the picture proved a sensation at Cannes and won a bunch of international awards in 1996.
Consecration arrived in 1999 with Rosetta, presented in Competition, crowned with the Palme d'or and Award for Best Actress at the Festival de Cannes. The Dardenne returned in 2002 with The Son, which received the Award for Best Actor.
Equally producers (The Ax by Costa-Gavras, 2005), they won a second Palme d'or in 2005 for The Child. The Dardenne confirmed their reputation with Lorna's Silence, awarded Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2008.

Quote:
"We are slow. We talk together about what we've read, seen and heard. Things gradually come together. We speak with people. This provides our story with a great deal of material. We always start off with reality. We cannot accept an element which has no material necessity."