Young Mothers

Five girls in a shelter for young mothers in Belgium: one is considering adoption, one is looking for her own mother, one is trying to break from an addicted boyfriend. The camera follows each in turn and never lifts one above the others. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne wrote and directed. The cast is Lucie Laruelle, Babette Verbeek, Elsa Houben, Janaina Halloy Fokan and Samia Hilmi. It played in competition at Cannes in 2025, where the Dardennes took Best Screenplay and the Ecumenical Jury Prize. The institution is not invented. The shelter exists in the Liege area; filming took place in Banneux. The Dardenne method is unchanged: handheld camera, scenes without score, mostly first-time actors. What is new is carrying five separate stories at once and fitting them inside a single location. Who it is for: followers of the Dardennes and of social realism. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for a dramatic peak; the film runs level and leaves the resolution to the viewer.