Tori and Lokita

It is remarkable just how the Dardenne Brothers are still turning out emotionally charged and emotionally bleak films that hold deeply felt compassion nearly 30 years after making a splash with their 1996 feature film La Promesse. It was a Belgian drama about a father who traffics and exploits undocumented workers, one of whom gets severely injured at the work site. The Dardennes carry on similar themes with Tori and Lokita, but this time the story is told through the perspective of young undocumented immigrants in this absorbing drama, a continuation of the Dardennes’ cinema verité style that once again captures levels of deep humanism and despair.

It is a devastatingly, shattering portrait of two siblings, Tori (Pablo Schils) and Lokita (Joely Mbundu), who are pulled apart by bureaucracy as Lokita awaits legal papers while her brother Tori lives legally and safely in Belgium at an orphanage. However, both endure even more forbidding adversities than government clearance, as Lokita’s pathway to citizenship is further idled once she is held captive against her will and her brother is coerced into selling drugs. And it is right here, in a liberal, democratic nation like Belgium, where inhumane living conditions still persist, where both siblings’ challenges meet struggles and a horrible fate.

Courtesy Janus Films

Tori and Lokita share many of the same sensibilities and plot threads as The Kid With a Bike, Rosetta, The Son, Lorna’s Silence, and Young Amend, as well as the Dardenne Brothers’ other films about troubled youth.The setting looks more or less the same in each Dardenne film, but in comparison to Dardenne’s other films, where most hold redemptive moments and shimmers of home for their doomed protagonists, for humane and authentic reasons, there is something more uncompromising and harrowing about the worst of human beings can experience, but the Dardenne’s also allow for many tender moments with its vulnerable protagonists.

Often, the Dardennes have used Bressonian style parables that channel true Christian sensibilities throughout their films of forgiveness, redemption, and caring for the poor. These aspects aren’t as explicit this time around. While a plight for human compassion is alive in their framework, what makes this film feel different this time are the Dardennes’ feral perceptions, which feel a lot less allegorical and more attested this time around, where the Dardennes ratchet up the stakes to make a very believable account of the European immigrant experience. The result is never polemic either, it’s more of a study of survival merged with observational realism that is never inauthentic and always gripping.

Courtesy Janus Films

After reaching critical acclaim and winning an exclusive 75th Anniversary Award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Lokita and Tori should be celebrated as one of the Dardenne brothers’ most potent works. Even more than being a harrowing tour de force that is rooted in cinematic truth, the film, which feels like it’s separated into two halves in its nearly 90-minute running time, is structured in a way that feels like two films in one. In the first half, we observe the sibling bond between Lokita and Tori as they sell marijuana for Betim (Alban Ukaj) on the side during late-night business hours. One night, they are stopped by the police and luckily aren’t searched, but Lokita is ordered to court for her documentation. During which Lokita and the smugglers who brought them to Belgium demanded more money. Once Lokita goes to court, she is denied visa status until she gets proper documentation. Lokita ends up being hauled off and held captive at a marijuana farm for three months with no contact with her brother. Betim’s associates take her SIM card and lock her inside a cubicle in a rural area with little sunlight, as if she were in prison. The Dardennes shine a light on what so many people certainly go through that is just beneath the surface of our communities.

While Tori and Lokita might be just as emotionally charged as EO, some people can’t handle kids in turmoil just as they can’t with animals, but there are shimmers of hope throughout the film. We see many moments of dignity from supporting characters, whether it’s a woman giving Tori directions on a bus or a stranger helping Tori send a money gram to his family back home, We see young Tori as a young, well-mannered boy with great potential who resorts to drugs to help his family back home. The film is striking in its observational approach and its social realism.

Courtesy Janus Films

Cinematographer Benoît Dervaux does an exceptional job upholding Dardenne’s cinema verité aesthetics. They’ve always had a distinct style that lets you know it’s a Dardenne film from the start. They even revisit some of their past imagery, such as Tori riding his bicycle, which recalls Cyril cruising on his bike in The Kid With a Bike. Then you have heights, as we recall in The Son, The Kid with a Bike, and Young Ahmed, where I found myself cringing each time Tori climbs up something. Like their other films, the Dardennes tap into our societal apathy. So many have many trivial grievances where they just fail realize in just so much injustice to carry on in this world, perhaps even in our own backyard. As the third act arrives, one might wonder why the Dardenne’s have never crafted a suspense drawer as it glistens with so much intensity and tension that it will put you on the edge of your seat just as much as any action film or slasher film could do. This is also conveyed so emotionally thanks to the heartbreaking performances by both Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu, which rip deeply into their characters. You understand what’s at stake, and it melds well with their genuine emotions.

In retrospective, the Dardenne brothers are no strangers to crafting harsh films, and Tori and Lokita carry on these insights with raw emotional power and rich poignancy. It’s one of those films that needs to be told and holds a potency that’s both requisite and solicitous. With that, it’s certainly their strongest film since The Kid With a Bike. It’s a potent and abrasive chronicle of young life in peril; it’s also a harrowing, resounding film that’s also a humanitarian cry to improve the human condition that should eventually make an imprint in the Dardenne’s essential filmography.

Tori and Lokita open in limited theaters Friday, March 24th, 2023.