Always Good Movies

Direction: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Country: Belgium / France

The Dardenne brothers, Belgian masters of social realism, return with Young Mothers, a poignant chronicle of five teenage single mothers facing economic hardship while temporarily living in a maternal center in Liège. Struggling with anxiety, hope, and fragile illusions about their new reality, these young women each grapple with uncertain futures—whether to return to their families, reconnect with their child’s father, or keep their baby. Functioning as a group portrait, this marks the Dardennes’ first ensemble film, an inspired shift that proves fruitful. They shot it in the very center that initially sparked their idea for the film, grounding the story in authentic detail.

Young Mothers is not without flaws, but it stands as a powerful, emotionally resonant portrayal of young motherhood. The Dardennes’ signature quasi-documentary style brings intimacy and immediacy to the narrative, with each story punctuated by twists and moments of quiet revelation. The suspense lies less in whether these disoriented girls will give up their babies and more in whether they’ll achieve the emotional stability needed to build a full life. It’s a sharply observed and deeply felt drama that—despite its somber themes—glows with empathy and restrained optimism.

Throughout, the need for love, care, and human connection remains constant, while trauma is often met with gentle compassion and flickers of hope. Unraveling the threads with a tone that screams truth, Young Mothers never slips into pathos. It’s a vital, humanistic work that captures the wounds of the past, contradictions of the present, and fears of the future. Not the grandest film of the year, perhaps—but quite possibly the most essential.

Direction: Radu Jude
Country: Romania

Admired Romanian writer-director Radu Jude, always incisive and corrosive in his observations, continues to nurture a deceptively simple yet striking filmmaking style, favoring long, conversational takes—this time shot entirely on an iPhone 15. His latest feature, Kontinental ’25—both a nod to Rossellini's Europe ’51 (1952) and a sharp social commentary on Romania’s systemic failures and the erosion of individual experience—captures the essence of real neighborhoods (partly drawn from documentary footage on the history of local architecture) while following the story of a guilt-ridden Hungarian bailiff, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa). After evicting a once-celebrated athlete turned destitute alcoholic—who later takes his own life—she becomes haunted by the event.

Vilified by nationalists online and demonized by the xenophobic press, Orsolya cancels her vacation with her detached husband and seeks solace through a series of tense encounters—with a cold friend, her quarrelsome nationalist mother, an Orthodox priest, and her former law student Fred (Adonis Tanta), now a food delivery worker fond of reciting “Zen” parables.

This tragicomic narrative, seemingly small in scope, expands into a broader portrait of Romania’s social, moral, and political condition. Jude fuses absurdism with realism to create something both unpretentiously profound and mordantly funny. There are no thrills in the conventional sense—the real suspense lies in discovering where Jude will ultimately take us. Visually, the film remains modest, yet the director providies just enough terra firma to sustain viewer engagement.

While Kontinental ’25 may not reach the towering resonance of Aferim! (2015) or Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023), it achieves a finely tuned balance between structural modesty and thematic depth. Depending on one’s patience for slow cinema, this unabashedly sardonic work will either repel or fascinate—but it unmistakably continues Jude’s bold dismantling of Romanian society from within.