5. The Dardenne Brothers Aid Child Laborers With Their Film
When Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian filmmakers whose work baffles everyone yet they all claim to love, showed up at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival to promote Rosetta, a bleak drama about a teenage girl struggling for a better life for her and her alcoholic mother, critics showered them with universal praise and awarded them the Festival's most prestigious prize, the Palme d'Or, alongside a Best Actress award for Emilie Dequenne, who played the title role. What happened next nobody could predict however, as the citizens of Belgium were so shocked and disgusted at the conditions in which Rosetta had to live throughout the movie, that they successfully lobbied for a law that aided teenage workers across the country, forbidding employers from exploiting them by paying them minimum wage. The law would appropriately be called Rosetta's Law.