Cannes Film Festival 2025: The Dardenne brothers win the Best Screenplay award for "Young Mothers," a moving film about early motherhood

Jessica, Perla, Julie, Ariane, and Naïma are all being welcomed into a maternity home. While they haven't yet reached adulthood, they have already become mothers. Whether they accept motherhood or not, they are supported in this reception center to help them navigate their pregnancy, childbirth, and the first few months with their child.

Regulars on the Croisette with films that contrast with the splendor of Cannes, the two filmmakers have already won two Palmes d'Or with Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005). After Tori and Lokita , awarded a Special Prize at the 75th edition in 2022, The Dardenne brothers return this year with a film that immerses viewers in the daily lives of a handful of young mothers, minors, welcomed into a maternity home. Young Mothers is released in theaters on the day of its official competition screening, Friday, May 23.

Although they have diverse lives and backgrounds, the five "young mothers" all share a painful past, with complicated family histories, complex filiations, and broken paths. Ariane struggles with a toxic mother, Perla with an irresponsible lover, Julie with her addictions, Jessica is looking for her mother. Naïma, for her part, has already come a long way when this story begins.

We discover the lives of these young girls at the maternity home. With the help of the facility's staff, they learn to perform the daily tasks of caring for their babies. In this perilous situation, where every extra blow, every small step wrong, can lead to disaster, the maternity home's support workers are there. They offer the young mothers a listening ear, but also a framework, with rules, conducive to the blossoming of a relationship with their child, as well as to the development of their sense of responsibility.

In this protected space, which provides the necessary conditions for building their future, they also learn to manage emotions, which arise in cascades due to their pregnancy, but also their journeys and the obstacles they have to overcome to decide what is good for themselves and for their baby.

The film highlights the challenges of this crucial period following childbirth, which will strongly influence the future of these still-underage mothers and that of their children. It clearly demonstrates the need for support. Thanks to this welcoming place, a refuge, a place of listening and kindness, Jessica, Julie, Ariane, Naïma, and Perla end up accepting what is happening to them more calmly and can look forward to the future.

A place where they learn to overcome their fears and anxieties to become responsible adults, capable of freeing themselves from the familial and social determinism that has stuck with their families from generation to generation. This emancipation will also allow them to make conscious decisions that they believe are good for the rest of their lives and that of their children. "The arrival of a child plays a role. It's a break in each of their lives, but it also allows them to move towards their own light," Jean-Pierre Dardenne explains in an interview with franceinfo Culture.

The Dardenne brothers' camera captures with intensity and modesty what is happening in this decisive moment for these young mothers, barely out of childhood, catapulted abruptly into a world of adults, responsibility, and gravity. Echoes can be heard between their daily lives and what we discover, as the story unfolds, of their past stories. Can Jessica become a mother without knowing her own? How can she build a relationship with her baby when almost all ties have been severed in her own life? ?

By choosing to focus on several young girls, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne tell not not only the singularity of each destiny, but also a shared story, which sheds light on this complex question of the motherhood of minors. "These young mothers spend time together in the maternal home, but they are also five solitudes" , underlines Jean-Pierre Dardenne. "Each is confronted with her own problems, her own weights, her own destiny, her choices to make, not to make. We wanted these to be stories which, if I may say so, in a certain way, end well".

Film after film, the Dardenne brothers are building a large-scale social cinematographic oeuvre. By filming mothers and their babies, they delve this time into the origins of all the lives they have been chronicling for fifty years. years. Their empathetic camera, always placed in the right place, captures an often tragic truth, without ever flirting in any way with ease or pathos.

In terms of form, the Dardenne brothers' method is always the same. : a raw realism, close to documentary, with a camera very close to its characters, empathetic, which follows the movements of the protagonists, often in sequence shots. We find this way of filming the necks, the backs, which invites the spectator to walk in the footsteps of the characters, to share their torments, their emotions, without complacency. "We must avoid the spectacle of suffering. That's what we must keep in mind... And we feel it. Sometimes, it goes too far, so we walk back. This is perhaps also why we don't play music," underlines Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

The art of unearthing emerging talent, a specialty of the Dardenne brothers, is here multiplied by the choral dimension of this new feature film, carried by a quintet of generous young actresses, striking in their accuracy and intensity, in counterpoint to more seasoned and equally moving actresses, like India Hair, with remarkable restraint.

" Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are back ," Thierry Frémaux emphasized almost apologetically during the conference presenting the official selection. "We take responsibility," he continued. "Like publishers, loyal to their authors, the Cannes Film Festival is loyal to a few filmmakers, and especially to the Dardenne brothers," he justified. "We are supporting this chronicle of deindustrialization, this chronicle of people who fall into a certain marginalization, this chronicle of what the world is becoming through the destinies of contemporary Belgium." Will the Dardenne brothers once again be able to touch the festival jury with this new chapter of this chronicle? ? Verdict Saturday.

This article was updated on May 24 with the jury's verdict. The Best Screenplay Award went to the Dardenne brothers.

Gender : Drama Director: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne With: Babette Verbeek, Elsa Houben, Janaïna Halloy Fokan Countries: Belgium, France Duration: 1h45 Release: May 23, 2025 Distributor: Diaphana Distribution Synopsis : Jessica, Perla, Julie, Ariane, and Naïma are staying at a maternity home that helps them in their lives as young mothers. Five teenage girls who hope to achieve a better life for themselves and their child.