The Kid with a Bike (French: Le gamin au vélo) is a 2011 drama film written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Set in Seraing, Belgium, it tells the story of a 12-year-old boy (Thomas Doret) who turns to a woman (Cécile de France) for comfort after his father (Jérémie Renier) has abandoned him.

While The Kid with a Bike does not deviate from the naturalistic style of the Dardenne brothers' earlier works, a comparatively bright aesthetic was employed, as well as a screenplay inspired by fairy tales.

Cyril stabs her with a pair of scissors and goes to Wesker, who makes him beat and rob a newsstand owner and his son.

Later, the son against his father's wishes confronts and chases after Cyril, who climbs a tree to get away but falls when struck by a thrown rock.

Luc Dardenne said that he and his brother Jean-Pierre had for a long time had the idea of a film about "a woman who helps a boy emerge from the violence that holds him prisoner.

It received further funding from the CNC, Eurimages, Wallimage, Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française, and the Belgian French Community.

[5][6] Cécile de France was offered the role of Samantha soon after the screenplay was finished, as the brothers believed she would be able to portray the kindness of the character with her body and face alone.

According to Luc, they hesitated for a long time, but eventually decided that music would serve the film's structure: "In a fairytale there has to be a development, with emotions and new beginnings.

[9] In Belgium, the film was launched on 27 screens and entered the box-office chart as number six, with a weekend gross of 70,768 euro.

[10] In France, it was launched in 172 venues and had an attendance of 107,763 the opening week, which also resulted in a sixth place on the domestic chart.

[15] Jonathan Romney wrote in Screen Daily: "After the slightly sub-par Lorna's Silence (2008), the brothers are back on peerless form with this story of innocence betrayed and befriended, which must count as one of the best films about childhood since Kes – or for that matter Bicycle Thieves, to which it surely nods."

Romney further commented: "Shooting as usual with cinematographer Alain Marcoen, and in their familiar stamping ground of Seraing, the brothers this time bring a somewhat different, airier look to their locations, more suburban than in the past.

"[16] At the 2011 London Film Festival it was among Sight & Sound's 30 recommendations; according to them, "The Dardenne brothers may be the most consistently high-achieving filmmakers of our time – the kings, if you like, of poetic neorealism.

"[17] Upon its March 2012 UK release, Peter Bradshaw gave it (four stars out of 5) and said it "revive[s] the memory of De Sica's 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves"; it is a "heartfelt, boldly direct film composed in the social-realist key signature of C major, revisiting the film-makers' classic themes of parenthood, trust and love.

[19] Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York named The Kid with a Bike the fourth-best film of 2012, calling it "another remarkable, unsentimental stunner [from the Dardenne brothers].