Review: Young Ahmed (2019)

Belgium’s Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, collectively known as the Dardenne Brothers, though not necessarily household names, are certainly some of the most beloved mainstays of global art house cinema. Their social realist dramas have won them two Palme d’Ors, for 1999’s Rosetta and 2005’s L’Enfant, a rare feat in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. Their most recent film, Young Ahmed, also debuted at the festival, winning the brothers the Directing Award in 2019. While in many ways this new film will not be a surprise to long-time fans of the directors, it nonetheless explores new ground in terms of subject matter, while remaining committed to the overall legacy of social realist cinema they work within. The brothers’ participation in this legacy of neorealist cinemas involves both portraying stories of everyday people and the moral and political obstacles they encounter, as well as the inclusion of many of the movements’ formal and narrative traditions. 

Formally, this includes favouring the long take and filming on location rather than sets. The Dardennes employ no soundtrack in their films, as well as the use of non-professional actors. Narratively, their stories, while hardly without central conflicts or narrative suspense, generally avoid the kind of goal-oriented plots favoured in American cinema, and often end with ambiguous or open-ended conclusions. In all those ways Young Ahmed looks and feels very much like a Dardennes film and a fine entry in the cinema of contemporary European realism.

The Dardennes, as Belgians, live in a state that is at the heart of the European Union: the capital of the union is Brussels. Nearly all their films thematically explore life in contemporary Europe, which philosophically can be seen to embody both the triumphs and flaws of modern liberal societies. Their films, such as Le Fils, L’Enfant, and Two Days, One Night, explore social and labour issues, including poverty, freedom, and criminal justice. They shine a light on the marginalized and under-explored corners of the European Union, particularly Belgium and France, while also simultaneously upholding and interrogating the values of their society. While ostensibly secular and left-leaning, the Dardennes often take viewers into realms that challenge the limits of contemporary social discourse, asking questions about values such as forgiveness that are just as easily framed as religious, in the sense that they get at our deepest and most foundational values.

Young Ahmed is no different, though it makes the religious investigations of their films more explicit in telling the story of a young boy, Ahmed (Idir Ben Addi), who has been radicalized into a fundamentalist strain of Islam. When the film begins, Ahmed already expresses a devotion and fervour not matched by his friends and single mother, not just to Islam, but to the strict interpretations fed to him by his local Imam (Othmane Moumen). This includes a reverence for his cousin, who it is implied died as a martyr fighting for an ISIS-like group. The film portrays a growing conflict between the beliefs of Ahmed and those in his community, not just secular Belgians, but other Muslims at his school and his mother and teacher. The film spends significant time showing Ahmed’s dedication to his daily prayers and oblations, establishing how these practices provide a sense of meaning and stability in his life.

But eventually Ahmed becomes convinced that he must take further action and one day attempts to kill his teacher, who he believes is an apostate from the faith. The remainder of the film follows Ahmed’s journey through the Belgian correctional and therapeutic state apparatus, and prompts us to ask what the process of de-radicalization might look like. How can Ahmed remain faithful and be rehabilitated? Rather than settle on an easy answer, Young Ahmed sets up genuine questions of whether religious fundamentalism has a place in contemporary secular Europe.

Young Ahmed, like other Dardennes films such as Two Days, One Night, remains exclusively focused on its main character; Ahmed is in every single scene. At the same time the film’s short run time and streamlined focus creates a significant amount of tension and suspense throughout. For a film that looks so little like most of what we have become accustomed to thinking of as gripping filmmaking, Young Ahmed kept me rapt in attention and literally on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen.

The film also features a sudden and shocking ending that asks us to consider the role of forgiveness and individual kindness in combating radicalism. Even the benevolent liberal institutions of the Belgian state are made up of individuals whose interactions with Ahmed would seem to run up against the boundaries created by his fanaticism. Ahmed expresses at one point that he’s annoyed at how “nice” everyone is to him in the system. As part of his rehabilitation Ahmed is sent to a farm; ostensibly, working outside with animals and in nature will aid in Ahmed’s deradicalization. When a young Belgian girl who works and lives on the farm makes romantic overtures toward Ahmed it shakes his assumptions about how he wants to relate to the rest of society. While it might seem banal for adolescent hormonal urges to play a role in tipping Ahmed away from fundamentalism, the film makes an implicit comparison between this normal adolescent experience and the role the lack of a father played in his radicalization by Imam Youssouf.

The Dardennes genuinely challenge us in asking how conservative interpretations of Islam might fit into modern Europe. However, the film never falls into Islamophobia, as some critics have alleged, because it remains too honest in its observation, refusing the simplistic answers. Even discussions of Qur'anic interpretation between the Muslims in the community of the film don’t simply assume the rightness of the liberal interpretation over others.

Young Ahmed is in many ways another solid entry in the Dardennes’ ongoing social realist project, short and to the point while refining the filmic techniques the brothers have developed over their career. But in other ways with its controversial and topical subject matter, the film clarifies and makes even more pointed some of the themes and conclusions that have always lurked in the subtext of the brothers’ films.

8 out of 10

Young Ahmed (Belgium/France, 2019)

Written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; starring Idir Ben Addi, Olivier Bonnaud, Myriem Akheddiou, Victoria Bluck, Claire Bodson, Othmane Moumen.

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