With La promesse, the Dardennes reoriented their filmmaking towards the rigor and intensity that would mark the rest of their work and bring them to international prominence. The avant-garde trappings of Falsch and the lyricism of You’re on my Mind are each replaced by a detailed, ominivorous realism anchored by the brick-by-brick rhythm of everyday dialogue and an inspired handheld camera. La promesse follows a young man over the course of a few crucial days as he helps his father manage a crew of illegal immigrants for a construction job and is suddenly forced by an accident to choose between his awakening conscience and his loyalty to his father.

Lessons compiles a series of portraits of Polish immigrants living in Belgium, filmed for television by the Dardennes. Linking the Dardennes’ documentaries and their depiction of the beleaguered protagonists of their subsequent fiction films, these sketches of difficult lives together mark the beginning of the Dardennes’ interest in the lives of immigrants, a theme that runs from La promesse through their latest film, Lorna’s Silence.