Fleurs du mal

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. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)