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TORI AND LOKITA (2022, BEL) – 7/10

The legendary Belgian brother duo, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne in Cannes, where they already won two Golden Palms (Rosetta, Child), presented themselves again with a drama filmed in their distinctive style. Once again, the Dardenne brothers focus on the issue of marginalized members of society, young people, and this time it is a couple of young immigrants from Africa. Lokita is a 16-year-old girl who arrived in Belgium from Benin and is trying to get asylum, but it is clear to us from the start that her story is not very convincing. She claims that she had to flee Benin because her younger brother, ten-year-old Tori, was accused of witchcraft in Africa, which automatically means the death penalty.

But the bureaucrats from the immigration center find some holes in Lokita’s story, and very soon we will realize that it is not exactly the way she wants to present it. They live in the center for asylum seekers while they wait for papers and Lokita occasionally does some simple work, but all the money she manages to earn is stolen from her by the team that apparently smuggled them to Europe. She works as a dishwasher in a restaurant, they both occasionally deal drugs for the manager of the same restaurant, but soon Lokita will get involved with a dangerous team that will place her as the guard of an illegal marijuana laboratory in a secret location.

All those who have previously watched some of the films of these famous Belgian brothers probably know what to expect. A harsh, naturalistic, problematic drama in which there is little in black and white, filmed with a hand-held camera, about the fate of two young people who are trying to find their way and survive. Although “Tori and Lokita” definitely does not belong to the very top of the Dardenne brothers’ creativity, it is nevertheless a finely thought-out, high-quality film in which they once again managed to find new faces for the main roles. In one of the secondary roles, that is, in the role of the restaurant manager, the increasingly busy Albanian actor Alban Ukaj appears, whom we have seen in numerous Bosnian and Serbian films in recent years.

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