Rasmané Ouédraogo

A Nigerian peasant arrives at a dusty gold mine in Burkina Faso where he hopes to forget the past that haunts him. Official Selection - Sundance FF.

On his first night in a wild prison in the Ivorian forest, a young man narrates the life of a legendary outlaw in order to stay alive.

La promesse is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually coming to understand the implications of his father’s making a living through the exploitation of undocumented workers. Filmed in the Dardennes’ industrial hometown of Seraing, Belgium, La promesse is a brilliantly economical and observant tale of a boy’s troubled moral awakening.