Lorna’s Silence

Colour, 35 mm
Belgium, France, Italy, 2008, 105 min
Section: Open Eyes

Synopsis

Lorna, a young Albanian woman living in Belgium, longs to have her own snack bar. In order to get citizenship, she fakes a marriage with drug addict Claudy. Now a Belgian citizen, she wants to get the money for the snack bar by faking yet another marriage with a Russian mafioso. Claudy, however, tries some emotional blackmail on Lorna, he wants clean up – will Lorna agree to a plan to get rid of him? Another raw drama from the Dardenne brothers with outsider protagonists living on the outskirts of affluent Western society, in a film which also examines the acute inner conflict of the main character. Claudy constitutes the road to freedom for Lorna but, at the same time, he is her main obstacle. The power of the story is reinforced by the magnificent direction and the minimalist composition of the situations. The temperate yet highly effective form further fuels the claim that the Dardenne brothers are two of Europe’s most talented contemporary filmmakers. Lorna’s Silence came away from this year’s Cannes festival with the award for Best Screenplay.

About the director

Jean-Pierre Dardenne (b. 1951, Engis, Belgium) was originally a professional actor, and his brother Luc Dardenne (b. 1954) a student of philosophy. In 1975 the two founded the production company Dérives, and the company Films Dérives Production followed in 1981. They dedicated themselves to making documentary films on video, but it was primarily their feature-film work that made a name for them. The brothers are two-time winners of the Cannes Palme d’Or for their films Rosetta (1999) and The Child (L’enfant, 2005). They have also presented other feature films in Cannes – Falsch (1986), The Promise (La promesse, 1996) and The Son (Le fils, 2002). Their last four films have been shown at the Karlovy Vary IFF.