The Dardenne Brothers at the School of Public Affairs

On September 28th 2022, as part of the School of Public Affairs' Culture Masterclasses, Sciences Po welcomed the Belgian filmmaker brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for the release of their latest film Tori and Lokita, the film critic Jean-Michel Frodon and Diaphana’s CEO Michel Saint-Jean. This meeting was an opportunity to understand  how to edit, create, and distribute a socially engaged film alongside artists and professionals from the film industry. >

WRITING, DIRECTING AND CASTING TORI AND LOKITA

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne began by describing the writing and directing process of Tori and Lokita. Even before writing the script, they knew that they would tell the story of a friendship between two young migrants, driven by the conviction that friendship is essential during such ordeals, as it allows one to maintain trustworthy relationships while being far from home. The filmmakers then wrote their film as an act of resistance against the dominant discourse in society. To do so, they studied the situations experienced by immigrants in Belgium. This step was fundamental in the creation process: the directors got the chance to discuss with the police to obtain information on the drug and arms trafficking scene. They also met with directors of migrant reception centers in Belgium and learned about the administrative workings of unaccompanied exiled minors’ welcoming in the Revue de l'enfance et de l'adolescence. Finally, the two artists explain that their script was shaped and structured from the writing of the main characters. For Luc Dardenne, the film was only born when Tori and Lokita began to exist.  

A key moment of the meeting was the two brothers’ fascinating elaboration on the staging of their works. They remain faithful to several principles that they replicate from set to set: they shoot the scenes in continuity, that is to say, following the narrative order of the script; they keep the sets throughout the entire duration of the shooting (up to two and a half months); they organize several weeks of rehearsals in the sets, even if they are unfinished, with or without the actors, whether professional or not; and they film in long sequence shots (one shot in Tori and Lokita lasts seven minutes).   

Regarding distribution, Michel Saint-Jean presented his job, which is the last step of a film’s production line. According to him, the fundamental question that every distributor must ask himself is why a particular film should be distributed. However, the distributor is called upon to intervene at various stages of the film's creation: he or she reviews the script that the Dardenne brothers send him or her, takes care of the creation of the poster, the choice of the release date and the number of copies of the feature film to be supplied. As far as Diaphana is concerned, Michel Saint Jean specifically distributes films that he loves profoundly or that question the world we live in. He also says he likes to create long-term artistic partnerships, such as those with the Dardenne brothers or Ken Loach.

THE SINGULARITY OF THE DARDENNE BROTHERS' CINEMA: WHAT IS A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CINEMA?

What is an engaged artist? Luc Dardenne declares that a film is political as soon as it focuses on an individual. "If we manage to film the individual, we are already committed to massification”. Art is interested in individuals, in details, in living things, and for Jean-Pierre Dardenne, their commitment as filmmakers is to remain at the characters’ level without taking them as objects of study. Although "meaning emerges from the material," this does not mean that the characters should be used to produce a discourse, however benevolent. 

When we ask the two artists about what makes their social cinema unique, Jean-Pierre Dardenne answers with a simple quote from the Neapolitan playwright Eduardo de Filippo: "If you look for style, you find death. If you look for life, you find style”. They acknowledge that their experience of documentary filmmaking allowed them to learn the technique. When they realized that they began to give great importance to directing, they finally turned to fiction. Furthermore, both brothers point out that the shaping of their characters is influenced by the different portraits they created in their documentary films. Thus, tese characters exist before, during and after their passage on screen.

"Masterclasse Culture" with the Dardenne Brothers on September 28, 2022 © CD/Sciences Po

Jean-Michel Frodon emphasizes that this is precisely the heart of a committed artist’s work. He conceives the brothers’ cinema as a carrier of movement, thought and sensitivity. Their cinema questions the way we live together from singular stories and seeks the possibilities of creating a common space. He also identifies two singularities in Tori and Lokita: the film’s simplicity and the exploration of the adventure genre. The two young people have adventures, but they are set in reality, without falling into the Hollywood buddy movie, often built around male friendships. The Dardenne's latest film features an unusual pairing: a fusional and combative duo formed by a little boy and a teenage girl. According to the film critic, this original friendship story suggests the power of creativity, inventiveness, courage and unique strength that could not exist in other situations.

FRENCH CINEMA IN CRISIS? FROM EMPTY CINEMAS TO THE ECOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

The French film industry is facing an unprecedented attendance crisis. Michel Saint-Jean, Diaphana’s director, alerts us to the seriousness of the situation: French cinema is going through its most difficult time since 1895, when the first movie was screened in a theater on Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. The Additional Solidarity Tax (known as TSA), a tax on cinema tickets, is the backbone of the entire French film industry ecosystem and, accordingly, the drop in ticket sales is undermining its sustainability. Its operation is based on a threshold of approximately 200-220 million admissions per year. However, since the covid crisis, the number of admissions has dropped by 30 to 40%, reaching an average level of 140-150 million admissions per year. In that sense, Michel Saint-Jean tells us that we must invent and distribute more intelligently. The absolute urgency is to bring the public back to theaters, but the distributor admits that the exorbitant prices of movie tickets is problematic. 

Jean-Michel Frodon insists on the importance of proposing innovative cultural policies in order to continue to discover, think and understand our world through cinema. The way they are designed today is, according to him, the main explanation of the structural crisis that the French film industry is going through. Simple subsidisation is no longer a sufficient policy to support creation and distribution.  

The last question we asked our four guests proved to be a thorny one. What about the ecological transition in film production and distribution in France? Michel Saint-Jean, a little forbidden, confesses that the subject challenges him as a spectator and citizen, but not really as a distributor. Jean-Michel Frodon elaborates by telling us that the CNC has recently published a regulation imposing a new framework for energy and electricity consumption in movie theaters. He deplores, however, the fact that this policy is only "cosmetic", and reminds us that one of the major ecological challenges for the film industry remains the environmental footprint of international festivals. Thousands of visitors fly across the world for a few days in Cannes, Venice, New York or Toronto, so the question remains: how to reconcile these important cinematographic moments with the ecological transition?

As for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, they have even raised the possibility of making a film about a climate refugee and recognize that ecological aberrations are still common on film sets, from the abundance of plastic water bottles and the multitude of motorized vehicles used.

Overall, the first Culture Masterclass of the year 2022-2023 offered Sciences Po’s students the privilege to listen to professionals and artists talk about the film industry, cultural policies, cinema and art at a time when French cinema is undergoing a profound crisis. Eléné's closing word, the meeting’s highlight, shook the room with laughter. Our comrade paid a nice tribute to the film by evoking the ritornello "Alla Fiera dell'Est" that Tori and Lokita sing in chorus (but that she refuses to hum), while reminding the assembly of the heavy task the four guests charged us with: simply "save French cinema" and create new ambitious cultural policies, "not only by giving money", referring to the inefficiency of the subsidy policies pointed out by Jean-Michel Frodon. Eléné's speech, both tender and incisive, ended the first Culture Masterclass of the year 2022-2023 in style: institutions as well as the film industry’s actors themselves have the responsibility of addressing this structural crisis while proposing ambitious cinematographic projects that tackle society’s economic, political and social fractures. 

Article written by students of the Culture policy stream at the School of Public Affairs: Liv-Ophélie Forsans, Louise Hottinguer, Louise Leport, Romane Levi, Eléné Pluvinage et Maya Soler.

Private screening organised for students on the morning of 28 September at the cinema Le Silencio des Prés © CD/Sciences Po

en savoir plus

• The Culture policy stream at the School of Public Affairs (French track)
• The Cultural Policy and Management stream at the School of Public Affairs (English track)