The Dardennes just dropped the trailer for The Young Mother's Home, and it does something most trailers from Cannes contenders dare not: it dares to hope. For a pair of filmmakers synonymous with grim realism and downbeat finales, this shift feels almost… radical.
That's not to say they've gone soft. The trailer is still pure Dardenne—handheld cameras, tight close-ups, unvarnished settings. The kind of aesthetics that feel like social work with a Steadicam. But the tone? That's where the surprise hits. Gone is the sharp isolation of Rosetta or the fatalism of L'Enfant. In their place: a quiet sense of solidarity.
Here's the uncomfortable truth:
After decades of showing us how institutions fail individuals, the Dardennes are now interested in how individuals create institutions—imperfect, makeshift, maternal ones.
A New Kind of Survival Story
The film follows five teenage mothers—Jessica, Perla, Julie, Naïma, and Ariane—living with their kids in a communal shelter. Instead of pitting them against each other (or the system), the trailer highlights their collective strength. In one poignant shot, they practice a song together, harmonizing not just vocally but emotionally. It's like Les Choristes, if the boys were all cradling babies and the headmaster was the welfare office.
This is the Dardennes channeling Ken Loach by way of Girlhood (Céline Sciamma's, not Lena Dunham's). The trailer's rhythm suggests a tonal shift: less thriller, more ensemble drama. In fact, it might be their first true ensemble film—moving away from the “boy in trouble” motif that's dominated their recent works (Young Ahmed, Tori and Lokita).
Critics haven't been universally kind to their latest outings—Tori and Lokita received a cooler reception than expected, despite Martin Scorsese's heartfelt endorsement in Variety. But The Young Mother's Home might recalibrate that trajectory. If Tori was about two kids fighting to survive, Home seems to ask: what happens after survival? What does healing look like?
Historical Echoes: Are the Dardennes Rewriting Their Own Playbook?
No filmmaker has ever won the Palme d'Or three times. The Dardennes came close in 2019 with Young Ahmed—only to be edged out when Parasite landed like a meteor. Some saw that as a pivot point: the Cannes jury shifting from minimalism to maximalism, from the spare to the spectacular.
But the Dardennes didn't flinch. Instead, they doubled down. Tori and Lokita was tighter, darker, arguably their most intense work. Now, with The Young Mother's Home, they're stretching in a different direction. Not abandoning their aesthetic, but evolving it.
And that matters. In a post-COVID cinema landscape where isolation stories have become cliché, a film about young women forging community feels fresh—almost revolutionary. Especially when delivered by two septuagenarian men whose previous characters rarely passed the Bechdel test.
Watch the trailer. Not just for the plot. Watch how the camera lingers when a baby reaches for their mother's face. Watch how silence hangs in the air like fog. Then ask yourself: Are the Dardennes still playing by their old rules—or have they finally broken their own mold?
Would you risk hope in a Dardenne film?
