Belgian filmmaker duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1999 with "Rosetta," and they went on to win it again this year with "L'Enfant" (international title: "The Child").
The brothers studied drama in Liege before moving to Brussels and their first work (a documentary about the Belgian working class) was financed with paychecks from double shifts at a nuclear power plant.
Their last three works, especially, deal with teenagers struggling with poverty in a starkly poetic way and have caused them to be compared to Ken Loach. "We are interested in the lives of children and people who exist on the fringe of this capitalist/consumerist society," explains Jean-Pierre, the elder of the duo. "What happens to them, what do they think about, what kind of future do they have to look forward to? We didn't want to lie about it because when one is very young and poor, it's extremely difficult to have hope.''