Close-up on Lokita subjected to relentless interrogation where they try to figure out if the girl is indeed Tori's sister, as they both claim. A panic attack forces the interruption.

We are in Belgium. At stake is a residence permit, documents that would allow her to be a maid and send money to her mother to support the family.

Twelve-year-old Tori already has papers as she is considered a witch child in her country and therefore persecuted.

Both sing in an Italian pizzeria where they entertain customers with a song they learned in Sicily when they first landed before being taken to Belgium.

-At the Eastern fair, for two pennies a little mouse my father bought...

And there came the cat that ate the mouse, which at the market my father bought-

Here indeed they came at the hands of countrymen who claim a share of the money they earn until the final ransom.

-And there came the dog, who bit the cat, who ate the mouse, which at the market my father bought- -

The pizzeria is a cover for an illicit market: the cook uses the two boys as pushers and more, in exchange for flatbread and little money.

-And there came the stick, which beat the dog, which bit the cat, which ate the mouse, which at the market my father bought...-

But the money was not enough and the documents did not arrive, and Lokita was led blindfolded to do something extremely illicit, isolated, without being able to hear her brother, without contact of any kind, in a shed in the far suburbs.

-And there came the fire, which burned the stick, which beat the dog, which bit the cat, which ate the mouse that at the market my father bought...-

The unmistakable Dardenne format, presented at the Cannes Film Festival, returns for the ninth time in competition: marginality, work, immigration, survival, money, crime.

A fast-paced, frenetic, exhausting, dramatic portrait of the lives of two innocents thrown into a fierce existence where survival is a daily conquest.

The cruelty of hiding that hangs like a guillotine over the head of Lokita, who would like to continue to stay with Tori and be able to send money to her family, and Tori who never stops, putting his energy and ideas to the test, willing to do anything just to be able to be with his "sister," make drawings for her, be able to sing the song of their origins before falling asleep.

Two extremely believable figures, excellently played by the protagonists accompanied by Angelo Branduardi's song, which is a re-proposition with music of the nursery rhyme "a kid" recited by the children at the end of the Passover dinner celebrating the miraculous liberation from slavery:

a text that conceals multiple meanings and becomes the conceptual subtitle of the frenetic, disturbing, heartbreaking 80-minute Dardennian film.

09-Jul-2023 by Beatrice