AroView: Belgium’s Dardenne Brothers return to their finest form with this social realist drama that won a Best Screenplay award at Cannes.

It’s an interleaving portrait of four teenage girls dealing with the predicament of pregnancy and young parenthood while variously negotiating unstable partners, drug addiction and their own mother’s hard luck stories. Crafted in the directors’ naturalistic, unfussy style that lets each of the actors shine, they also finds a satisfying narrative shape for each of the stories and for the sum of their parts.

“There is such simplicity and clarity here, an honest apportioning of dignity and intelligence to everyone on screen: every scene and every character portrait is unforced and unembellished.” ~Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“There’s never a false note from the young actors, all of whom have deeply moving scenes…” ~David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Deeply moving but never manipulative, Young Mothers amounts to the brothers’ best film in more than a decade.” ~Peter Debruge, Variety