Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's La Promesse | The Promise (1996)

Unsurprisingly, La Promesse is a social drama from the frères Dardenne set in Seraing, Liège. Igor (Jérémie Renier) is seventeen and works for his father Roger (Olivier Gourmet), who is exploiting immigrant workers: this is a world of usury, blackmail, theft and violence. And then, soon after the business has taken in a group of immigrants on a car carrier, African worker Amidou (Rasmané Ouédraogo) has a fatal fall and Igor promises before he dies that he will look after his wife Assita (Assita Ouedraogo) and her baby.

We first saw Igor looking at a customer's car and then surreptitiously robbing her, but here begins Igor's adulthood, and his moral education: the future of two individuals, both unaware that the father is dead, is in his hands. Igor, his promise made, goes out of his way to help Assita: paying for her housing, humiliating his father. We have seen here how Assita is subjected to racism by being pissed on, but Igor even sells his ring (showing his pact with his father) to help Assita, who becomes a kind of mother figure he looks after.