'The Kid With a Bike' by Belgium’s Dardenne brothers won this year’s Grand Prix prize.
Eleven-year-old Cyril is determined to re-establish contact with his absentee father and recover his bicycle, stubbornly ignoring the signs that he has been deliberately abandoned.
The Kid With a Bike (Le Gamin au vélo), will screen at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, which runs from 21 July to 7 August.
The film won the jury-bestowed Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, regarded as the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d’Or.
The film’s directors are Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who are winners of two previous Palmes d’Or for Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005) and are “known for creating uncompromising, socially aware dramas: spare, haunting stories about working-class lives in industrial Belgium”.
Also from the MIFF program notes: “With this tremendously moving drama the Dardennes once again display their directorial flair and their impeccable casting choices”.
