Ulrich Seidl’s ‘Paradise: Love’ to Compete for Palme d’Or

I’ve been a huge fan of Ulrich Seidl ever since seeing the Austrian director’s Import/Export, so when I learned that Paradise: Love will be competing at Cannes, my little heart started to race. Here’s the synopsis:

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as Sugar Mamas: European women to whom black beach boys offer sex to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian from Vienna and the mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels as a sex tourist to this vacation paradise in search of 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.
Through the power of its images, emotions and performances, “PARADISE: Love” tells of sex tourism, older women and young men, the market value of sexuality, the power of skin color, Europe and Africa, and the exploited, who have no choice but to victimize other victims.