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Every October, horror fans in Los Angeles celebrate the Halloween season with diverse scares on the big screen at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival, and this year, in addition to a slate of exciting new films, the festival will honor the late, great Tobe Hooper with a special screening of The Funhouse, and Child's Play fans can also look forward to a screening of the first Chucky movie followed by a Q&A with director Tom Holland.

Press Release: Hollywood, Calif. – September 26, 2017 – Screamfest Horror Film Festival, America’s largest, and longest running horror movie festival, announces its 2017 official schedule and the second wave of its festival line up. The fest will run from Oct. 10 - 19, 2017 at the Tcl Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. Over its seventeen-year run, the female-run festival has launched careers - providing a platform for filmmakers and actors to showcase their latest work to enthusiasts and general audiences.

Photo by Darren HughesThe Unknown Girl opens with a handheld close up of Dr. Jenny (Adèle Haenel) examining a patient. “Listen,” she says, handing her stethoscope to Julien (Olivier Bonnaud), a medical student who is interning at her clinic. Never ones to shy away from a glaring metaphor, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne announce in that brief exchange their film’s driving thematic and formal concerns. When Jenny later learns that her decision to not allow a late-night visitor into the clinic might have contributed to the young woman’s death, she puts her skills and training to new purpose: listening for clues that might help solve the murder.The Unknown Girl differs from the Dardennes’ previous fiction films only in its more obviously generic plotting. This seems to have contributed to the uncharacteristically mixed reviews that greeted the film at its 2016 Cannes premiere, where it was faulted for failing to...

The distributor has picked up Us rights to newly announced Cannes selections Graduation and The Unknown Girl.

Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (aka Bacalaureat) is a family drama that takes place in small Romanian town where everybody knows everybody.

Adrian Titieni, Maria Dragus and Lia Bugnar star. Mungiu’s Mobra Films produced with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne of Films du Fleuve; Pascal Caucheteux and Grégoire Sorlat of Why Not Productions; Vincent Maraval of Wild Bunch; and Jean Labadie of Le Pacte. Tudor Reu is executive producer.

Sundance Selects negotiated with Wild Bunch for The Unknown Girl – also known as The Son Of Joseph (La Fille Unconnue) – from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Adele Haenel, Jeremie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Fabrizio Rongione and Thomas Doret star in the story about a young doctor who investigates the identity of a mysterious dead body. Denis Freyd and the Dardennes produced.

The buys bring to four the number of Cannes competition selections in the...

La Fille inconnue

Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Writers: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

The two-time Palme d’Or winning Belgian duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta; L’Enfant) take our top spot for most anticipated foreign film of 2016. Like their last two features, the directors have cast a well-known actress, Adèle Haenel (recently winning her second Cesar for Love at First Fight) for their latest feature, La Fille inconnue (The Unknown Girl) (Cecile de France centered 2011’s Kid with a Bike while Marion Cotillard mastered 2014’s Two Days, One Night). Haenel stars as a young general practitioner who feels severe guilt about not providing surgery for a young woman who is found dead a short while after. Confirming the girl’s identity is a mystery, the Gp is determined to find out what happened and who she is.

Cast: Adèle Haenel, Jeremie Renier, Thomas Doret, Olivier Gourmet, Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Cornil

Production Co.

★★★☆☆ Renoir (2012), Gilles Bourdos' sumptuous portrait of the French master's final years and his filmmaker son Jean's first creative stirrings, is big on atmosphere but lacks dramatic tension. Father (Michel Bouquet) and son (Vincent Rottiers) fall for the same woman, Andrée Heuschling (Christa Theret), who becomes Jean's wife and the leading actress in his early films. Set on the Cote d'Azur, Renoir opens with Andrée arriving on the elderly artist's doorstep claiming to be his next model. Suffering from advanced arthritis and mourning the recent loss of his wife, Renoir also employs a household of women to look after him.

The women cook and clean, tenderly dress the French artist's ravaged hands, mix his paints and ferry him between house and terrace or from riverbank to orchard. Revitalised by Andrée's sensuality, Renoir starts painting nudes again. By contrast his young son, Coco (Thomas Doret), is largely ignored. He wanders aimlessly...

“You can’t explain a painting, you have to feel it”, is a line uttered in Gilles Bourdos’s Renoir. Sadly, such a statement isn’t quite as exclusive to cinema, and here is an example of a film that, although certainly alluring and pleasing on the eye, has very little beneath the surface, in desperate need of some patent definition, as this biopic of two of France’s most renowned artistic talents doesn’t quite match up to the innovation and exceptional capabilities that our subjects had in abundance.

What with Renoir and Thérèse Desqueyroux, it seems that French filmmakers are tapping into the current trend of period dramas, that have proved to be so successful across Europe with the likes of Downton Abbey and A Royal Affair. This takes place on the French Riviera across the summer of 1915, at the picturesque abode of ageing Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir...

Review by Barbara Snitzer

While I highly recommend the new French movie Renoir, I feel obligated to caution that my recommendation might not apply to all Movie Geeks.

The most action-packed scene in this movie involves a paintbrush on canvas- no CGI, not even a montage to push the action along. This movie moves at the pace of Heinz ketchup being poured. If the mere description I’ve offered is making you fidget, watching this movie will feel like driving behind an elderly person going 45 mph with their blinker on. This is not the movie for you to go to impress a date; it won’t be long before a more appropriate French movie will be released.

For the rest of us, Renoir is an ambrosial two hour respite on the French Riviera, specifically Cagnes-sûr-Mer, generously offered by director Gilles Bourdos who is a native of nearby Nice. For those...

Chicago – Naming a picture after two of the great artistic minds in human history is quite a high bar to set. Director/co-writer Gilles Bourdos attempts to tell the tale of both impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet) and his son, the future filmmaker Jean Renoir (Vincent Rottiers), who would go on to helm controversial masterpieces such as 1939’s “The Rules of the Game.” These are fascinating people, but the script doesn’t even begin to do them justice.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

Taking place in the twilight of Pierre-Auguste’s life circa 1915, Bourdos’s lead-footed vignette upstages its two male subjects with the underdeveloped character of Andrée Heuschling (Christa Theret), a woman who would prove to be the favored muse for both artists. It’s hard to say how Andrée influenced these men, apart from exuding her youthful radiance, and there are times when the line between muse and prostitute becomes hopelessly blurred.

The Talent Family: Bourdos Abandons Genre for Elegant Biographical Period Piece

A summer signifying the encroaching end of one artist and the birth of another within one of France’s most famous families is the subject of Gilles Bourdos’ latest film, Renoir, based on the biographical novel penned by the great grandson of Auguste Renoir, Jacques (himself a notable cinematographer and photographer). A pastoral portrait that often reaches a resplendence with its moving images that evokes the works of its famed subject, this marks an aggressive change of pace for Bourdos, who has thus far seemed most interested in adapting mystery thrillers for the screen (and to middling effect, at least judging from his 2008 English language debut, Afterwards). Managing to avoid the clichés associated with lofty biopics, this straightforward rendering smartly focuses on a slight passage of time and isn’t driven by any overtly dramatic scenarios.

Set on the...

Title: Renoir Samuel Goldwyn Films Director: Gilles Bourdos Screenwriter: Jerome Tonnerre, Gilles Bourdos, Michel Spinosa, based on the book “Le Tableau armoureux” by Jacques Renoir Cast: Michel Bouquet, Christa Théret, Vincent Rottiers, Thomas Doret, Romane Bohringer Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 3/21/13 Opens: March 29, 2013 A small percentage of the world’s people have a talent so immense that the rest of us may wonder what goes on in their personal lives to shape their avocations. Many in this elite circle may have unexceptional lives not worthy of the interest of a biographer, a novelist of a filmmaker. Not so Pierre-August Renoir, who may have been genetically privileged to be [ Read More ]

The post Renoir Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Chicago – All this fuss about Ben Affleck not getting nominated by the Academy after directing three decent flicks is even more inane in light of the fact that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, arguably the greatest directing duo in modern cinema, haven’t garnered any Oscar attention. At all. Their latest naturalistic triumph, “The Kid with a Bike,” snagged a mere Golden Globe nod several months before it even premiered on U.S. screens.

The alleged edge-of-your-seat suspense in “Argo” has all the tautness of a snail race compared to the blistering tension conjured by the Dardenne Brothers as their camera confines the audience within the solitude, desperation and mounting dread of their troubled protagonists. “The Kid with a Bike” is the Dardennes’ most excruciatingly suspenseful and emotionally galvanizing effort since their 1996 breakthrough, “La Promesse.” Both films center on self-sufficient boys in danger of deteriorating into destructive products of their environment,...

From the first minutes of "The Kid with a Bike," marked by an energetic shot of its young protagonist, Cyril, careening through a field and climbing over a fence, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's latest is an exercise in kinesis. It's not just that Cyril's always running: he's running away. The Belgian duo's 2012 Cannes Grand Prix-winner, available this week on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection, stars Thomas Doret as the tough-minded, frustrated adolescent desperate to reconnect with the father (Jérémie Renier) who's abandoned him. He also wants his bike back: his father sold it to make some quick getaway cash, and with it Cyril's sense of possibility. It's as though Cyril, always streaming before the camera, believes that to stop moving is somehow to give up the chance to escape to a better life.   Yet for being somewhat lighter on its feet than the Dardennes' other work, moving fluidly alongside.

There’s an extraordinary moment in Rosetta, the Dardenne Brothers’ Palme d’Or winning slice of grungy life from 1999. About 22 minutes in, Emilie Dequenne’s sooty faced street urchin turns her ballistics up to eleven, and savagely cusses out her mother’s would-be John, then immediately greets her romantic interest by tearing him off his moped and trying to kick the living snot out of him. It’s a stunning display of unfocused rage, and firmly establishes Rosetta as a young woman capable of shockingly violent hysteria; a baby-faced waif consumed by anger and frustration that’s set on a hair trigger.

The Dardennes’ latest, The Kid with a Bike, is a grueling 87 minutes of such moments, as the Brothers reassert their mastery of desperate stories about screwed up young people. Set once again in the environs of Liege, Belgium, the film introduces us to, and quickly immerses us in,...

This week on DVD/Blu-ray: The latest from the Dardenne brothers; one of the most buzzed-about documentaries of last year; a moving coming-of-age drama that ranks as one of the best high school movies released in a good long while; a charming Sundance character study about a man and his robot; and a "Dangerous Liaisons" adaptation that proves the classic tale has lost none of its bite.   #1. "The Kid With a Bike" The Palme d'Or winning Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenn ("Rosetta," "L'Enfant") return with this acclaimed French-language drama about an 11-year-old boy (remarkable newcomer Thomas Doret) who turns to a stranger (Cécile de France) after his father (Dardennes' mainstay Jeremie Renier) abandons him. Winner of the Grand Prix (the runner-up prize to the Palme d'Or) at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, "The Kid With a Bike" packs an emotional whallop that feels warranted given the...

Welcome back to This Week In Discs! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. The Kid With a Bike (Criterion) Cyril (Thomas Doret) is a young boy in flux. His mother is long gone, and his father has dropped him at an orphanage ostensibly for a few days while he gets his job and house in order. That lie hides an unforgivable truth that Cyril simply can’t accept, but through his efforts to reunite with his dad he comes under the care of a single hairdresser (Cecile de France) with struggles of her own. This French film is a deceptively simple tale of a lost boy at risk, but it becomes one of the year’s most suspenseful experiences thanks in large part to Doret’s incredible performance. His fragile emotional state teases as much danger as local teen thugs and Cyril’s constant bike-riding do leaving viewers...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 12, 2013

Price: DVD $29.99, Blu-ray $39.99

Studio: Criterion

Thomas Doret takes it underground in The Kid with a Bike.

The Kid With a Bike is a 2011 drama film from the great Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (La Promesse, Rosetta).

In the movie, 12-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), all coiled anger and furious motion, is living in a group home but refuses to believe he has been rejected by his single father (Jérémie Renier, Summer Hours). He spends his days frantically trying to reach the man, over the phone or on his beloved bicycle. It is only the patience and compassion of  Samantha (Cécile de France, Hereafter), the stranger who agrees to care for him, that offers the boy the chance to move on.

Well-received by the critics, who noted that it was spare and unsentimental but genuinely tender, the PG-13-rated The Kid With a Bike enjoyed film...

“Kauwboy,” the Netherlands’ official Oscar entry and recent winner of the European Film Awards Fipresci prize, finds similarity in another 2012 Foreign-Language submission, Ursula Meier’s “Sister,” and last year’s enigmatic Cannes Grand Jury winner from the Dardenne brothers, “Kid with a Bike.” Each film centers on a neglected boy, with a sensitive eye to the fundamentally loving yet insufficiently responsible adults around him. All three films are anchored by striking performances from their young leads. Thomas Doret and Kacey Mottet Klein in “Kid with a Bike” and “Sister,” respectively, show a naturalism and lack of self-consciousness that many adult actors would envy. Rick Lens in “Kauwboy” is equally fine. Lens plays Jojo, a mop-haired pre-adolescent living with his father in a green Dutch suburb. We know that Jojo is at home by himself often, with his burly, taciturn father coming...

★★★★★ Directed by two-time Palme d'Or-winning Belgium duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo, 2011) continues a remarkably consistent partnership. We're thrust straight into the action as the film opens with a young boy whose life of conflict and disobedience has resulted in him running away from the children's home his father (Jeremie Renier) has abandoned him in. His name is Cyril (Thomas Doret), a deeply troubled boy, wrestling with the hefty emotions evoked by paternal rejection.

Read more »...

Wild Bill; The Kid With a Bike; Act of Valour; StreetDance 2; Bel Ami

News that the actor Dexter Fletcher was to make his directorial debut with a London-bound tale of old lags out on parole led some to speculate that the film would owe a debt to Guy Ritchie's geezery oeuvre. Yet a more accurate touchstone for the surprisingly tender Wild Bill (2011, Universal, 15) would be the films of Shane Meadows, with which this shares both a tough edge and a soft heart. Charlie Creed-Miles stars as the eponymous ex-con whose release from prison is met with dismay by his son, Dean (Will Poulter), who has been acting in loco parentis to younger brother Jimmy (Sammy Williams) for years. Initially, Bill doesn't want anything to do with his children, preferring to head north in search of pastures new. But when social services threaten to put the kids into care,...

It feels like only yesterday that we were talking about the best films of 2011, and yet here we are, nearly at the end of June, and we've seen pretty much everything that the first half of the year has to offer. So with the mid-point of 2012 nearly upon us, we thought we'd look over the best films we've seen in theaters over the last six months.

And it's not been a terrible year so far. There have been a few real stinkers and some disappointments, but there's also been some decent blockbuster fare and a bevy of foreign language and independent films that have been serious treats for filmgoers. How many of these will still be on our year-end lists come December remains to be seen; there's some tough competition on the way. But all in all, the first part of this year at the movies could have been a lot worse.

Gilles Bourdos' Renoir romance goes to Samuel Goldwyn Films for U.S. distribution The official selection at this year's Cannes Film Festival, playing on Friday night in Un Certain Regard, will be sent out by Goldwyn spring 2013, reports Variety. Directed by Gilles Bourdos, Renoir stars Michel Bouquet, Romane Bohringer and Thomas Doret, and is set in the Côte d'Azur in 1915. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's is suffering from the loss of his wife, as well as news of his con being wounded in action. However, when a young girl comes into the picture, the painter in his twilight years has a spark of new energy, which inspired some of his best work including The Bathers ("Les baigneuses).

Gilles Bourdos' Renoir romance goes to Samuel Goldwyn Films for U.S. distribution The official selection at this year's Cannes Film Festival, playing on Friday night in Un Certain Regard, will be sent out by Goldwyn spring 2013, reports Variety. Directed by Gilles Bourdos, Renoir stars Michel Bouquet, Romane Bohringer and Thomas Doret, and is set in the Côte d'Azur in 1915. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's is suffering from the loss of his wife, as well as news of his con being wounded in action. However, when a young girl comes into the picture, the painter in his twilight years has a spark of new energy, which inspired some of his best work including The Bathers ("Les baigneuses).

At the end of each month, the Sound On Sight staff will band together to write an article about their favourite scenes in films released. Here are our favourite scenes from the month of April.

Warning: Of course, spoilers are in full effect here!

Rebelle - Friendly ghost warning

There are a host of wonderful moments in this picture, but it is those which spoke to the film’s pseudo-supernatural nature that I remember most fondly. The protagonist’s connection to the spirit world has see see the ghosts of the dead at various moments. The nondescript actors portraying the spectres are painted in white from head to toe and their eyes are equipped with some strange contact lenses, thus perfectly whitening them as well. The ghosts are not scary per say, but definitely a creepy, odd addition to the picture, with their first ever appearance being the most effect,...

A young boy who longs to be reunited with the father who abandoned him falls in with the wrong element in The Kid With A Bike a new French-language drama from Belgian writer/director brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The new film has their trademark style using available light and a handheld camera seems to simply observe events as they unfold, as if the film makers have just happen to have stopped to film what’s going on. It.s a candid tone sorely missed in Hollywood’s noisy style of movies but the story lacks interest and on balance, The Kid With A Bike is a snooze

The Kid With A Bike opens with 11-year-old Cyril living at a state-run orphanage, trying to understand what happened to his father, who disappeared from his life without saying goodbye. Cyril figures his dad, no matter how much a deadbeat, wouldn.t...

2012 promises to be a fantastic year in cinema. Not too long ago, we posted a list of thirty of our most anticipated films of 2012, and so I decided I would keep track of my favourite films released each month. Here are my five favorite films released in March.

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1- Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Screenplay by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Ebru Ceylan

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most interesting directors working on the international scene, and Once Upon A Time In Anatolia might just be his best movie to date. This being his sixth feature, it won the Grand Prize at Cannes last year and as since received critical acclaim around the world.

In this metaphysical quasi-police procedural, a group of men (including a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect) drive out in the middle of the night through the Anatolian countryside,...

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year.s Cannes Film Festival, the deeply moving new film by the Dardenne brothers (L.enfant, Rosetta) delves into the emotional life of troubled 11-year-old Cyril (newcomer Thomas Doret). When his father (Jérémie Renier) abandons him, Cyril obsessively tries to find his bicycle.after all, his father must have cared about him enough not to sell that off, he reasons. Almost by accident, he becomes the ward of a kind hairdresser (Cécile de France), a woman who seems surprised to find herself so determined to help him. With his wild, unpredictable behavior and his disastrous search for father figures, Cyril risks losing her.though she refuses to give up without a fight. Full of heartbreaking betrayals and unexpected grace, The Kid With A Bike is a film about a child, abandoned to the elements, learning to become good.

Wamg is giving away admit-two,...

The Hunger Games holds on at the UK box office as schools break up, but will Mirror Mirror take the holiday prize?

The Easter battle

With schools breaking up for the Easter holiday last Friday, box office was always going to be a prize worth fighting for, and several major films entered a market already dominated by The Hunger Games. The Suzanne Collins adaptation experienced a relatively modest 33% drop from the previous weekend, holding on to the top spot with a solid £2.99m. In the Us, the drop was a steeper 62%, albeit falling from a towering $153m opening that was always going to see a large decline. With £9.85m so far, The Hunger Games is well positioned to build a solid total over the holiday period.

Top new entrant is Wrath of the Titans, but with box-office less than half the debut achieved by predecessor Clash of the Titans two Easters ago.

The Hunger Games's £4.9m opening is the UK's best showing of the year, and The Kid with a Bike proves an arthouse hit

The winner

With £4.9m, including Thursday night previews of £431,000, The Hunger Games has posted the biggest UK box-office opening of the year. But with a concurrent mammoth Us opening of $153m, the third-biggest ever for that territory, Lionsgate has acted quickly to put the UK result in an appropriate context. "The Hunger Games was always destined to be this phenomenon in the Us," says the distributor's UK boss, Zygi Kamasa. "Book sales have been strong in the UK, but it's not on the same scale. We hoped to be better than Twilight's UK opening, and in fact we are very nearly double that." Indeed, such is the monster the Twilight franchise subsequently became, it's easy to forget that the original film's UK debut was a relatively modest £2.51m,...

Cyril is looking for his dad. The boy was dropped off at a state-run foster home by his father and told it was just a temporary thing while the man got his act together financially. But the days became weeks, and now when Cyril tries calling he gets a recording that the line has been disconnected. He runs away from the home eventually making his way back to where he used to live. But his father is long gone. The Kid With a Bike offers up a sad story, but it avoids melodrama through honest writing, beautiful acting and Cyril’s sheer force of will. The boy refuses to accept his abandonment at face value and pursues the truth regardless of the walls erected in his way. It’s alternately heartbreaking and hopeful, and it’s never less than engaging. Most surprising for a simple drama, the movie is easily one of the year’s most suspenseful...

The realistic movies of the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the former aged 60, the latter 58, have been winning prizes for 15 years now, including two Palmes d'Or at Cannes. They've established their own particular geographical area (largely working-class small towns in post-industrial, French-speaking Belgium) in which they explore a familiar series of themes and situations that inevitably arise from this milieu – broken families, alcoholism, unemployment, conflict with and exploitation of immigrants. Their elliptical, carefully observed films dig deeper and find new things to say each time they put their hands to the plough, and The Kid With a Bike (aka Le Gamin au vélo) sees them in good form, if somewhat short of their very best.

The title has probably intentional echoes of Bicycle Thieves and the Dardennes' roots in Italian neo-realism, and the kid is the ginger-haired, fiery-tempered 11-year-old Cyril Catoul (Thomas Doret), whose thoughts are never far away from his bike.

The Kid With A Bike (12A)

(Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2011, Bel/Fra/Ita) Thomas Doret, Cécile de France, Egon di Mateo, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione. 87 mins

Once again, the Dardenne brothers pull you into the world of a poor, marginalised soul and keep you there, without resorting to any fancy tricks. How do they do it? In this case it's impulsive young Cyril: no mother, rejected by his father, no friends, and only his talismanic bike to cling to. What's to become of him? It sounds rather worthy but, in fact, it's an effortless watch – powerfully acted, paced like an action movie, and shifting into a higher gear of spiritual grace when it needs to.

The Hunger Games (12A)

(Gary Ross, 2012, Us) Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Wes Bentley, Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci. 143 mins

Teens are signed up, trained up and scrubbed up for a reality TV game of death in this...

The Dardenne brothers' heartfelt, bold film revisits their classic themes of parenthood, trust and love

The Dardenne brothers revive the memory of De Sica's 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves with their latest work – as well, of course, as the memory of their own previous films. Where De Sica's father and son wander all over town with their bicycle, which gets stolen, the Dardennes' son wanders all around looking for his dad, and for his bicycle, which gets stolen. And just as in De Sica's film, the situation is so chaotic it doesn't occur to anyone to lock the bike, or recommend locking it. This is a heartfelt, boldly direct film composed in the social-realist key signature of C major, revisiting the film-makers' classic themes of parenthood, trust and love. It gets a lot of storytelling accomplished in its brief running time, although the directors gloss over the realities of criminal assault. Newcomer...

The Kid with a Bike

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Cast: Thomas Doret, Cecile De France, Egon Di Mateo

Running Time: 1 hr 28 mins

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 23, 2012 (Limited)

Plot: A conflicted young boy (Doret) is put under the weekend foster care of a hairdresser (De France) after his father declares he never wants to see him again.

Who’S It For?: Fans of patient dramas; those who liked De France in Hereafter, and are curious to see what else she can do. Those particularly interested in stories about youth, and youth being in danger.

Overall

Placed into the film footsteps of now classic movies like Cinema Paradiso and Oldboy, The Kid with a Bike was awarded the “Grand Prix” (Aka second place) at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. While The Kid with a Bike may not be as outwardly incredible as those aforementioned films and some others from “Grand Prix” history,...

Chicago – The sullen little boy is always on the run. His red shirt and jacket cause him to resemble a crimson blur against the green and gray landscape of his Belgian town. He believes that there must be an explanation for why his absent father has left him in a state-run youth farm, and is determined to track him down. Consumed with confusion and rage, the boy has no choice but to keep moving toward a destination that may not exist.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

This may sound like a hopelessly depressing premise, but in the hands of celebrated auteurs Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, it emerges as a riveting, immensely powerful meditation on the need for human connection. It’s also incredibly tense for a quietly nuanced drama, and viewers may find themselves spending much of the film holding their collective breaths with the hope that no harm will come to the pint-sized yet stubbornly resourceful protagonist.

Title: The Kid With a Bike Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Starring: Jeremie Renier, Cecile de France, Thomas Doret, Egon Di Mateo Simple grace is a quality rarer in modern films than one might expect, as is the yard-by-yard, in-the-trenches slog of messy human connection, absent a lot of cathartic speechifying. Both are on rich display in French import “The Kid With a Bike,” however, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and a Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe nominee. With their latest movie, fraternal portraitists Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne deliver a compelling character study of adolescent emotional dislocation, shining a light on the weight of both nature [ Read More ]...

★★★★☆ From Belgian directorial duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and featuring an outstanding central performance from 15-year-old newcomer Thomas Doret (just 13 at the time of shooting), new Artificial Eye release The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo, 2011) is a frank, often heartbreaking story of an 11-year-old foster child struggling to come to terms with his father's rejection.

Read more »...

Also Reveal That Holly Hunter Is One Of The Hollywood Stars Who Has Expressed Interest In Working With Them

What can be said about the Dardenne brothers that five Cannes awards don't already say much more definitively? Even a mediocre splotch in their oeuvre is twelve notches above most other contemporary films that get paraded around on the blogosphere.

But our nose is getting a little brown so we'll just leave it at this: "The Kid with a Bike" is another ridiculously strong entry in an already highly consistent body of work (read our review here). Using their signature no-bullshit aesthetic, the Gallic duo set their eyes upon a young boy with behavioral problems. After being sent to an orphanage by his father, Cyril (Thomas Doret) finds comfort in hairdresser Samantha (Cecile De France), who crosses paths with him after he runs away from the child services establishment. The woman's...

Film: The Kid with a Bike (2011) Cast includes: Thomas Doret, Cecile De France (Hereafter), Jeremie Renier (l'enfant) Writer/Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne (Rosetta, The Child) Genre: Drama (87 minutes) French with subtitles "This number is no longer in service." Eleven-year-old Cyril knows it's a mistake. He dials it again and again. "Your dad has moved out," the caretaker insists, but Cyril is determined to find his dad. He'll run away from the home again and again, if that's what it takes to find his dad. When the people at his old apartment tell Cyril that his dad moved out, Cyril insists that can't be true. "My bike's there, too." But the apartment is absolutely empty. Samantha is a perfect stranger that Cyril grabs on to when they come to take him back to the home. She hears Cyril's pleas and has an idea about finding the bike. The next day,...

A tragic figure in the person of an eleven year old, but a boy who never gives up. The Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc) have crafted an understated smash with their new breathtaking .The Kid With a Bike.. This riveting portrayal of a boy growing up alone took home the Grand Prix at Cannes 2011 and, more recently, scooped up a whopping four European Film Award nominations. The film is worth it. It is the most amazing blend of heart-rending tragedy and eye-watering courage to be seen this year. Thirteen year old Thomas Doret is cast in the role of elven year old Cyril Catoul, a boy abandoned by his father. Doret does almost all of the heavy lifting...

Belgium's most celebrated film-makers discuss the challenges of working together and their new award-winning film The Kid With a Bike

Liège is grim, but Seraing, a half-hour bus ride away, is even grimmer. It's a wasteland of broken windows, abandoned factories and unchecked graffiti. It's in Seraing that you can find the tomb of British-born John Cockerill, who in the early 19th century revolutionised the steel industry and helped to turn the region into the first fully industrialised area in continental Europe."When we were at school, it was still busy," says Jean-Pierre Dardenne. "There were shops, lots of people … Now in places there's 25% unemployment."

The Dardenne brothers, Belgium's most celebrated film-makers, grew up in Seraing, and it's here that they set their films. The town is so palpable in their work that it is almost a character in its own right.

We meet in the offices of Les Films...

Reality is a pretty easy thing to portray in a movie. We all have a pretty firm grip on the rules of the world, and the way that certain events will play out once initiated. To mirror reality is merely a matter of viewing and reproducing. However, authenticity is a much different beast to tame. To make a movie feel authentic, like a swatch of fabric freshly hewed from the tapestry of life, is a feat that is rarely achieved in full.

Part of this is because the grammar of cinema is made to accentuate the artifice of the narrative method. Cuts and varying focal lengths and non-diegetic music all work to put a facade of unreality over the approximation of reality that the artists work so hard to create. Part of it is just the fact that we, the audience, can see the seams at the edges, sense the performance,...

The latest film by the exceptional Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is their most integrated, and arguably their finest achievement. Its visuals are airier, its sound richer, in part on account of the atypical inclusion of music (chords from Beethoven’s ethereal piano concerto Adagio un Poco Mosso).

The film was originally called Deliver Me!, a title which could apply to any of their projects. Redemption is a constant in their work—not redemption of the heavy-handed sort, or payoff for introspection and devotion, but salvation intricately bound up with those on the margins, proletarians who are neither intellectually gifted nor spiritually inclined. The Dardennes shoot their films amidst the unappealing landscapes in which these simple folks grapple not with existential crises but with the more banal occurrences of the quotidian.

Deliver Me! was retitled The Kid With a Bike. The new name might seem a soft-pedaling of its lofty themes,...

Brothers and directors Jean-Paul and Luc Dardenne discuss The Kid With a Bike, opening in New York and Los Angeles March 16

Brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne may not be household names here in the States, but they certainly are in rarefied air, since they have done something only five directors have done before. They have won the prestigious Palme D'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival twice (Rosetta 1999, L'Enfant (The Child) 2005), joining Alf Sjoberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, and Shohei Imamura as the only directors with two Palme D'Or wins. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne return to cinemas with their latest drama entitled The Kid with a Bike, which opens in New York and Los Angeles March 16, before expanding nationally in the coming weeks. I had the chance to speak with Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne about The Kid with a Bike. Here's what they had to say below.

Life is teaching some lousy lessons to Cyril, an abandoned 11-year-old boy who can’t wrap his head around the fact that his single father has not only ditched him but, worse, sold his bicycle. Cyril (Thomas Doret) is the pint-sized protagonist of “The Kid With a Bike,” an achingly heartfelt drama from directors-writers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian brothers with a string of impressive art house credits, including “La Promesse” and “L’Enfant.” “Bike,” their latest -- like their other films, it’s set in a world of working class hurt -- won...

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have created a body of work since 1996 which places them clearly at the forefront of contemporary Belgian cinema and among the world’s most critically respected filmmakers. Their deeply moving new film, The Kid with a Bike, which won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, explores the emotional life of troubled 11-year-old Cyril (newcomer Thomas Doret) who is abandoned by his father (Jérémie Renier). His wild, unpredictable behavior and disastrous search for father figures almost costs him everything until a kind hairdresser (Cécile de France) befriends him and refuses to give up without a fight. We sat down with the Dardenne Brothers at a roundtable interview to talk about The Kid with a Bike which was shot in the industrial town of Seraing in eastern Belgium where they grew up. The filmmaking duo explained why the theme of loneliness and abandonment...

If there's a superstar of the international cinephilic community, it would be the Dardenne brothers. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who began their careers making documentaries in the 70s and 80s, have had six films at the Cannes Film Festival, and each has won an award there; they've won the coveted Palme d'Or twice. It's not hard to understand why this Belgian duo's approach has won over so many cineastes: with a rigorous approach to naturalism and an all-encompassing empathy for any character that crosses into their frame, their films have an emotional and psychological intelligence that is rarely glimpsed in contemporary cinema. Their latest, The Kid With A Bike, is an unvarying entry in their canon. Following Cyril (Thomas Doret), a young kid who is tired of living in a children's home and wants to be reunited with his father, and Samantha (Cecile de France), a hairdresser who effectively becomes...

The following is a reprint of our review from the Cannes Film Festival.

All the books on parenting notwithstanding, it's always been pretty simple: kids not only want love, they need it. And in the latest from Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne that need is amplified into a mellifluous tone of desperation encapsulated in little Cyril (Thomas Doret) the titular 'kid with a bike.' When the film opens Cyril literally can't believe what he's hearing: left by his father in a children's home (it's hinted that his mother is dead), he calls the number he has for his Dad, only to hear that the line is no longer in service. He's told that his father has moved without leaving a forwarding address and, unconvinced, he leaves school one morning to go there himself where he not only finds an empty apartment but learns that his bike is gone as well.

IFC Films has provided ComingSoon.net with an exclusive clip from Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike , which is out in New York and L.A. on Friday, March 16. The Dardennes are considered one of Belgium's finest cinematic exports with their previous films L'Enfant ( The Child ) and Rosetta , both winning the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The Kid with a Bike won a Jury Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Foreign Language Film category. It follows the story of 11-year-old Cyril, played by Thomas Doret, whose father (Jérémie Renier) abandoned him earlier and when his prized bicycle goes missing, he enlists the help of a hairdresser (Cecile de France) who becomes determined to help him...

The Kid With A Bike

Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

Belgium | France | Italy – 2011

When we talk about modernism in cinema, we are talking about filmmaking that acknowledges the medium as part of the storytelling, a melding of form and content so that the images on screen portray not just actions but interior psychology and moral quandaries. Keeping that in mind, it is hard to deny that the Dardenne brothers are among the most distinct and influential modernist filmmakers today. It seems unlikely, but the Belgian duo’s – who have been working steadily since the late 1970’s – mark can be felt in the visual fabric of a wide array of recent movies, from Derek Cinafrance’s Blue Valentine to Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior. With films like Rosetta, The Son, and The Child, the Dardennes pioneered a groundbreaking visual style based on virtuoso use of handheld camera...

Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

In recent years, “Dardenne-like” has become a favorite descriptor of international film critics. If a film features an economical, but emotionally complex narrative, a naturalistic approach to filmmaking and a penchant for lower class protagonists brought to life mostly by non-professional actors, you can bet somebody somewhere is going to compare it to the work of the Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. As their latest, the Cannes Grand Prix-winning and Spirit Award-nominated The Kid with a Bike, makes its way to theaters nationwide, we had the chance to speak with the much lauded filmmaking brothers about their early years, their working methods and how it feels to become an adjective.

Doug Jones: Film Independent does—among other things, like the Los Angeles Film Festival—a lot of classes and labs for young and emerging filmmakers. So with them in mind, I wanted...