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Tori and Lokita (Tori et Lokita)
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Tori and Lokita (Tori et Lokita)

Although Tori and Lokita is Belgium based with the focus on that country’s particular method of dealing with migrants, it’s fair to say that the fundamentals of this film could resonate well beyond.
Opening with Lokita (Joely Mbundu) being interviewed for papers that would allow her to work legally, the pressure is immediate as she fails the questions. The stumbling point being her sibling relationship to Tori (Pablo Schlis), which the interviewer finds dubious.
Both from Benin they are in an immigrants’ children’s home, with no legal way of earning they are dealing drugs for a pizza business, raising money to send home and to pay the traffickers that brought them to Belgium. For Lokita there’s the added humiliation of sexual exploitation for some extra Euros.
Lokita, is blindfolded and taken to an isolated complex where she’s put in charge of tending the weed crops, as one of the operatives calls her, ‘the gardener’. She’s there for three months with no mobile – they can be traced – and the very basics to stay alive, physically and mentally.
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne there may not appear to be anything too deep on the face of it, migrants looking for a better life in Europe are caught in legal and bureaucratic minefield, which force them to work illegally, for the illegal.
But as Lokita and Tori’s stories develop, it becomes more intriguing. Their relationship status is teased out over the film, Lokita is under massive pressure from her mother to send money, from the calls the viewer listens in on, there’s no sympathy with her or situation. Not to mentions the traffickers, who as one would expect, have only one interest. Then there’s Tori, already conditioning to the situation looking to undercut his boss with cheaper produce courtesy of him tracking down Lokita and the weed nursery. And all this illegal activity going on while they themselves are illegal.
The film relies on the performances of Schlis and Mbundu who are excellent and believable, in their debuts. Keeping the film together as it begins to lose its way towards the end.
Tori and Lokita is exclusively in cinemas from 2 December. The Dardenne Brothers will be doing Q&A screenings in London and Brighton over the opening weekend, info here www.toriandlokita.film