Rosetta (35mm)

ROSETTA (1999, 95 min)
Dir. Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne

Join us for this rare 35mm screening of ‘Rosetta’. The film follows the beating heart of a Belgian teenager struggling to find and hold onto a job, while living in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother. The camera tracks her perspective faithfully, bearing witness to the loneliness, hunger and constant fear without sentimentality. The directors described it as a ‘war film’.

Palme d'Or - Cannes Film Festival
Best Actress - Cannes Film Festival

‘We made a lot of documentaries about the working-class movement and we concentrated on the workplace because that’s where people come together in a common project. But we always told the story of one individual within those groups. And somehow that story was always about trouble at work – either because the guy was protesting at the conditions of his job or because his protest ended up with his employer sacking him. Rosetta is about a new generation – the children of that organised working class who didn’t inherit the movement their parents created. In Rosetta’s world she fights alone.’

– From an interview with the Dardenne brothers

This screening is dedicated to the work and memory of Émilie Dequenne, who died in March 2025, aged 43.