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"Impassioned, exciting and moving – a Twelve Angry Men of the 21st-century workplace … The Dardennes have made a brilliant social-realist drama with a real narrative tension." – The Guardian
After taking time off work to deal with a bout of depression, young mother Sandra (Marion Cotillard) learns that her role is to be made redundant. Voted out by her colleagues – who were given a choice between a 1000-euro bonus or Sandra's job – her first instinct is to retreat into despair, but at her husband's encouragement she instead stands up to fight. Granted the weekend to rally votes for a second ballot, she must track down each of her workmates and make a pitch for their support.
The celebrated Dardenne brothers (The Kid with a Bike, MIFF 2011) return once again to themes of working-class life and financial vulnerability, depicted through a compassionate lens that brings into focus not just Sandra's predicament, but those of her colleagues manipulated by management into selling her out.
"An eerily resonant rallying cry for the new economy." – Buzzfeed