The Child is the compelling new film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (The Son, MIFF 02), which won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes, 2005. At the centre of this emotionally powerful drama is a young couple, Bruno and Sonia, who survive on luck and little else in an industrial town in eastern Belgium. Cocksure Bruno lives minute-to-minute, making his way through petty theft and panhandling, constantly on the make. In Bruno's illicit and morally empty world, anything that can be peddled will be. When waifish Sonia returns home after bringing their son into the world, she finds that Bruno has sublet their apartment to total strangers. Caught in a moment and purely out of reflex, Bruno embarks on another reckless act, one that ultimately becomes a voyage of redemption, stripped of the artifice and heightened melodrama we've become all too used to in contemporary cinema. "The Dardennes produce a kind of spare, direct cinema that makes most other movies look positively gluttonous by comparison. Yet within that microscopic, claustrophobic canvas, they manage to achieve often stunning flurries of drama." - Variety