Two Days, One Night

Two Days, One Night

Deux jours, une nuit | Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2014
Belgium/France/Italy | French with English subtitles | Format: DCP | 95 minutes

Q&A with directors Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne at both screenings, actress Marion Cotillard on October 5

The action is elemental. The employees in a small factory have been given a choice. They will each receive a bonus if they agree to one of them being laid off; if not, then no one gets the bonus. The chosen employee (Marion Cotillard) spends a weekend driving through the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods of Seraing and Liège, knocking on the doors of her co-workers and asking a simple but impossible question: will you give up the money to let me continue to earn my own living? The force of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s new film lies in the intensity with which they focus on the second-by-second toll the situation takes on everyone directly affected, while the employers sit at a benign remove. In Two Days, One Night, the Dardennes take an urgent and extremely relevant ethical inquiry and bring it to bold and painfully human life. A Sundance Selects release.

Series: NYFF52 Main Slate

Venue: Alice Tully Hall