Young Ahmed

The directors' aesthetics are as formally rigorous and evocative as ever, capturing the unyielding nature of zealotry, as well as the difficulty of loosening extremism's terrible grip on individuals' hearts and minds.

[Filmmakers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne] are clear-sighted and righteous in their approach.

The narrative unfolds in that earnest semi-documentary (and French language) style that the Dardennes do so well. But it's also glib and unconvincing, and topped off by a profoundly stupid ending.

Young Ahmed might be major filmmakers in a minor mode, but it is still a riveting, beautifully made character study that provokes compassion and controversy in equal measures.

Young Ahmed can't resist the odd moment of melodrama, which sometimes feels out of place in an otherwise undiluted piece of social realism. This might not be vintage Dardennes, but it is still one of their most daring works to date.

The Dardennes have often put the young at the heart of their deceptively simple stories. Here they do it as urgently as ever - Ahmed a source of mounting dread, but still a boy, as yet undamned.

The biggest issue isn't its political outlook or the position it takes, but the superficiality and the one-dimensional way it approaches it. [Full review in Spanish]

“Young Ahmed” is yet another Dardenne brothers film that highlights their unique harmony of story and style. It’s a quietly affecting drama stripped of artifice and that fully embraces their naturalistic point-of-view.

An impeccable story with increasing stakes, even though the ending does not extend the contained rhythm that the entire film observes... [Full review in Spanish]

The brothers cram Young Ahmed with every conceivable cliche about Arabs and Islam, including the reductive dichotomic depiction of Islam as either radically violent or tolerantly liberal, and the allusion that all Arabs are Muslim.