PARADISE: Love

Synopsis

On the beaches of Kenya they're known as Sugar Mamas - European women who seek out African beach boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise as a sex tourist in search for love. She goes from one beach boy to the next, from one disappointment to the next. On the beaches of Kenya love is a business. PARADISE: Love tells, not without humor, of sex tourism, older women and young men, the market value of sexuality, the power of skin color, Europe and Africa, and of the exploited, who have no choice but to exploit others. Ulrich Seidl‘s film is the opener of a trilogy about three women in one family who take separate vacations: one as a sex tourist, another as a Catholic missionary (PARADISE: Faith) and the third at a diet camp for teenagers (PARADISE: Hope). Three women, three stories of desire that premiered one after the other at the three biggest A-festivals in the world: Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

Credits

With support from: Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund, Land Niederösterreich, Eurimages, CNC (Centre national de la cinématographie) | In collaboration with: ORF Film-/Fernsehabkommen, WDR, Arte, Degeto, Arte France Cinema

Director's statement

"I love to film people up close; to show their bodies without makeup. For me it's precisely in the unbeautified that you find something like beauty." – Ulrich Seidl

Reviews

"A maestro of discomfort whose taste for confrontation masks a seriousness of purpose and a measure of compassion."
Dennis Lim, The New York Times

"Repulsive and sublimely beautiful… hideous and masterful all at once. (Pasolini's) Salo with sunburn."
Leslie Felperin, Variety

"Paradise: Love will haunt you like a bad wet dream."
Stephen Garrett, The New York Observer

"The pitilessly documented insight of this film is: It's war. Tourism is war. Life is war. As it is now, life is war. And. Because it is a beautiful film. A beautifully austere film. And gentle. That is why this state becomes so despairingly clear."
Marlene Streeruwitz, Die Zeit

"The image is monstrously comical and acidly captures the imbalance in wealth and power between the First and Third Worlds, the commodification of people and the barter of globalization."
Martina Knoben, Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Seidl's trip to Africa becomes a cinematic treatise about our values. And naturally about the human comedy, our propensity to deceive ourselves about our true intentions and reasons for what we do."
Gunnar Decker, Neues Deutschland

Awards | Festivals

Awards
"Best Feature", Vienna Film Prize, Viennale, 2013
"Best Camerawork", Diagonale Prize for Wolfgang Thaler and Ed Lachman, Graz, 2013
"Best Art Design", Diagonale Prize for Renate Martin and Andreas Donhauser, Graz, 2013
"Best Actress", Austrian Film Prize for Margarethe Tiesel, 2013
"Best Feature", Austrian Film Prize, 2013
"Best Director", Austrian Film Prize, 2013
"Best Austrian Film - Paper Gustl", Austria, 2013
"Palić Tower - Best Director", Serbia, 2012

Downloads

Pressbook PDF: english/french | german/english
Pressphotos: 10x18,5 cm / 300dpi / jpg