With The Promise (La promesse, 1996), their third
feature film, the turning point in their work and the
paradigmatic film of their future career, the brothers
Dardenne find their way in the minimalistic hyperrealism
and social and moral drama, exploring social
and socially related moral instabilities related to contemporary
social and economic circumstances and
the postion of an individual living in them. For them,
realism is first of all an ethical position from which to
observe the world, a technical and artistic expression
of their moral standpoints.

Miroslav Sikavica