We Believe You

Charlotte Devillers and Arnaud Dufeys made their first feature for very little money and premiered it in Perspectives, the Berlinale's first-feature competition, in February 2025, where it took a Special Mention. A year later it won six prizes at the inaugural René du cinéma — the Belgian national awards that replaced the Magrittes — including Best Film and Best Director.

Myriem Akheddiou plays Alice, arriving at a family court for a custody hearing she cannot afford to lose. Laurent Capelluto is her ex-husband, Natali Broods the judge. The film runs seventy-eight minutes and stays almost entirely inside the courthouse, much of it in the hearing room itself, filmed close and hand-held so that the procedure — the interruptions, the paperwork, the professional calm of everyone being paid to be there — becomes the source of the tension.

Its subject is the gap between what a mother knows and what a court can act on, and the title is the sentence everyone says to her while the process grinds on regardless. At 3.96 on Letterboxd it is among the best-rated European films of its year, and it belongs firmly in the Belgian social-realist line the catalogue already holds through the Dardennes.