Synopsis
Young Ahmed (Le jeune Ahmed, 2019) is a drama from the Dardenne brothers that you can watch online on iFILM. At its center is a thirteen-year-old Belgian boy who hardens from an ordinary kid into a zealot almost before your eyes.
Egged on by his imam, Ahmed starts to see his schoolteacher as an apostate and convinces himself it is his duty to punish her. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne shoot it with no sermon and no score, the handheld camera kept close on the boy, so you trail him without ever knowing whether he'll go through with it. Idir Ben Addi plays Ahmed with a face you simply cannot read.
The film took the Best Director prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. It is a hard, deliberately cold watch that refuses any easy answer about whether a radicalized child can be pulled back. One for viewers ready for unsparing European realism. Stream Young Ahmed (2019) online on iFILM.
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