Tori and Lokita

The Dardenne brothers’ Cannes prize-winner – about the plight of two teenage African migrants struggling to survive in Belgium – is characteristically gripping, sobering and deeply moving.

The Dardennes’ distinctively humane and politically committed brand of realism has long focused on the vulnerable and dispossessed, but this account of life in today’s Europe – among their finest – is also their darkest. To obtain residence papers, teenager Lokita must convince the authorities that Tori – with whom she made the perilous journey from West Africa – is her younger brother. At the same time, to pay off the violent couple who smuggled them into Belgium, the pair deal drugs. They have only one another as support, but then they’re separated…

Beautifully performed by its non-professional leads, and written, shot and directed with seemingly effortless expertise, this is top-grade filmmaking: compassionate yet unsentimental, suspenseful yet shockingly relevant, and heartbreakingly sad.