European Films

 

The double Palme d’Or winners Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have started shooting on their sixth fiction feature film in their native Belgium, reports Cineuropa. The new projects is called Le silence de Lorna (Lorna’s Silence) and stars regular Dardenne leading man Jérémie Renier, Italo-Belgian actor Fabrizio Rongione and young Kosovar-Albanian actress Arta Dobroshi, who first came to attention in Kujtim Çashku’s Albanian feature Syri magjik (Magic Eye) from 2005.

 

Rongione and Renier both starred in films by another Belgian talent, Joachim Lafosse, last year; Rongione in Ça rend heureux (What Makes You Happy), which he co-wrote, and Jérémie alongside his older brother Yannick Renier and French diva Isabelle Huppert in Lafosse's Nue propriété (Private Property). Rongione also had bit parts in two earlier Dardenne films and recently wrapped Ariel Zeitoun's Le dernier gang (The Last Gang).

 

Renier, besides shooting two French features, also appeared in supporting roles in two English-language films: as a Francophone soldier in Joe Wright’s Atonement and in Martin McDonagh’s upcoming black comedy In Bruges alongside Colin Farrel, Ralph Fiennes and Brendan Gleeson. The actor also recently completed L’heure d’été (Summer Time), the new film from Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Boarding Gate) in which he plays the younger brother of Juliette Binoche and Charles Berling.

 

Le silence de Lorna will be his third feature for the Dardennes, after La promesse (The Promise) and L’enfant, which won the Dardennes their second Palme d’Or in 2005. The film will again be shot in the Liege area, like the brothers' previous features, with filming scheduled to continue on location through December.

 

The €4 million project is a Franco-Belgian co-production and tells the story of a young Albanian woman who enters a marriage of convenience with a young drug addict in Belgium. She does not want to help her newfound husband get over his addiction, however, because his death of an overdose might actually give her everything she always wanted. Unlucky for her, her husband decides to mend his ways.