Watch this: Dardenne brothers’ “Young Ahmet” is now streaming online

YOUNG AHMED (2020) Stream on Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. 

A bespectacled Belgian teenager gets swept up by radicalism in this most recent film from the brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne. The teenager, a 13-year-old named Ahmed (Idir Ben Addi), falls under the influence of an extremist imam (Othmane Moumen). As Ahmed grows apart from his family, his attention falls on his math tutor, Inès (Myriem Akheddiou) — a fixation that leads to catastrophe. “The plot may hinge on Ahmed’s actions and motivations,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times, “but the film’s real drama revolves around a central moral and political conflict, between religious extremism and a humanist ethos that is more behavioral than doctrinal.”

NY Times