Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Engis, April 21, 1951) & Luc Dardenne (Awirs, March 10, 1954)


The Dardenne brothers started to work in film together and bought their first film equipment together. As a seventeen-year-old boy, Jean-Pierre moved to Bruxelles and studied acting with Armando Gatti. The younger brother Luc often came to visit his brother. Soon Gatti invited him to join his acting group. The two brothers came back to their home in order to document social changes and made their first films about workers’ strikes and union meetings between 1974 and 1977. They made documentaries such as Le chant du rossignol (1978) and Leçons d\'une université volante (1821), and in 1987 their first feature film Falsch. Afterwards they made Je pense ŕ vous (1992) and La promesse (1996), which brought them international fame and the Joseph Plateau award for Best Belgian Film Directors. Their film Rosetta (1999) achieved an even greater success and received the Golden Palm in Cannes in 1999. Their last two films were The Son (Le fils, 2002.) and The Child (L\' enfant, 2005), which also won the Golden Palm.