Bitter Flowers

Jahia’s Summer

When Mila arrives at the asylum center, Jahia's life changes dramatically. Jahia has previously kept to herself, spending her evenings in the kitchen where she cooks for her mother, who is haunted by memories of their escape from Burkina Faso. Alongside a stern directive that she must go to school, a new girl appears at the center. Mila's forced but genuine optimism breaks through Jahia's barrier, but the wait for the life-altering asylum decision remains terrifying. And one day, Mila and her family receive their verdict. In this deeply unsettling but still hopeful drama, we follow two vulnerable friends who try to navigate an unstable and artificial everyday life, where life has an expiration date. Or a new beginning.

A Disappearance Foretold

A film about a popular neighbourhood in Beijing, and what happened there in relation to the 2008 Olympic Games. Qianmen is a popular neighbourhood in the very heart of Beijing, just south of the Tiananmen Square. In the perspective of the 2008 Olympic Games, the city decided that the six hundred years old neighbourhood has to be “rehabilitated”. It is now in the line of fire of the promoters, and the 80000 people living there are facing drastic (and dramatic) changes. The film follows the rapidly changing life in the neighbourhood for more than a year and a half, from one reality to another, completely different one. Little by little, fragment per fragment, the film is drawing a portrait of a neighbourhood, recording memory of a soon disappearing reality. A story of China today.