Flowers of Evil

Colour, HD CAM
France, 2010, 98 min
Section: Variety’s Ten Euro Directors to Watch

Synopsis

Capturing the energy and potential of the Internet and social media in an innovative and powerfully visceral way, ambitious experimental drama Flowers of Evil organically incorporates YouTube documentation of Iran’s 2009 post-election demonstrations and the government’s brutal reprisals into a tender love story set in Paris.... An attraction blooms when footloose Parisian hotel clerk Gecko meets Anahita, a Tehrani college student exiled to the City of Light by overprotective parents who fear her political participation. But Anahita’s worries over the rapidly unfolding events in her homeland, which she follows obsessively on her computer and smartphone, prevent her from participating wholeheartedly in the relationship. Director/co-writer David Dusa brilliantly uses the Internet as a narrative, structural and emotional tool.

About the director

David Dusa (b. 1979, Budapest, Hungary) grew up in Sweden and South Africa and obtained a masters degree in film studies in Gothenburg and Paris. He has won awards for his short films at festivals worldwide, including Rotterdam, the Berlinale Talent Campus, and Clermont-Ferrand. After his stunning feature film debut Flowers of Evil (2010), Dusa turned out the film The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, treating the power of social media and their influence on social change, and exploring the boundaries of the Internet as a foundation for a new civil society.