BUY TICKETS HERE
Join us at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 22 for the heartfelt coming-of-age drama “La promesse” (“The Promise”), the directorial debut of acclaimed Belgian filmmaking brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
LA PROMESSE | 1996 | DIRECTORS: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne | WITH: Jérémie Renier, Olivia Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo | RUNNING TIME: 1H 30M | UNRATED: Adult themes | In French with English subtitles
“La promesse” is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking.
The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually coming to understand the implications of his father’s making a living through the exploitation of undocumented workers.
Filmed in the Dardennes’ industrial hometown of Seraing, Belgium, “La promesse” is a brilliantly economical and observant tale of a boy’s troubled moral awakening.
“Morality is a given in the movies; everyone, even the worst of creatures, knows if they’re bad or good. In “La Promesse,” an exceptional film from Belgium, all of that is reversed as a sense of right and wrong struggles to emerge in a young man who never knew there was a difference. The conflicts involved are intense and absorbing, proving that compelling moral dilemmas make for the most dramatic cinema.
““La Promesse” makes being politically relevant and philosophically thoughtful so simple and involving that the story seems to be telling itself. Written and directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, a pair of filmmaking brothers, it is made with such unobtrusive sureness that it’s able to exert great power without forcing anything.
“Among the many things it does right, “La Promesse” refuses to even consider glib solutions. This film understands that moral choices are a painful, troublesome business, that decisions to do the right thing are not simple to take and hardly make things easier. Nothing in life takes more courage, and no kind of filmmaking offers greater rewards.” — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
Tickets are $6 (including service charge) and available at link above. Students use code STUDENT at checkout for free admission (must show student ID at the door).
