The location is Liège, Belgium, at a state home for teen mothers or mothers-to-be, who are being helped and counselled in how to have their babies, how to bathe and feed them, how to make contact with prospective adoptive parents (if that is what they want), how to deal with existing issues of addiction and depression and how to find housing. The young mothers live together as a community, each pulling their weight. Only through solidarity and sisterhood can they overcome the bad hand that life has dealt them.
"Around us, the notion of power is increasingly pervasive. This power crushes the fragility of life. This film gives a space of 1 hour and 42 minutes for five young girls to unfold. It is also an act of resistance, if I may use that somewhat grandiloquent word. A manifestation of something other than this desire to crush the weakest." (Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Brothers Jean-Pierre (b. 1951) and Luc (b. 1954) are an acclaimed Belgian filmmaking duo. In 1975, they established the Dérives production company, and in 1981 the Films Dérives Production. Together, they have produced over fifty TV documentaries. Jean-Pierre works at the Audio Visual Department of the Liège University, and Luc teaches at the Free University of Brussels. Two of their films, Rosetta and The Child, won the Palme d’Or Award at Cannes.