‘Paradise: Love’ (‘Paradies: Liebe’, 2012).

No one comments about sexual tourism when it deals with men traveling to foreign countries for bargain sex (Amsterdam, Brazil, Thailand, Japan, etc., etc.) but when Ulrich Seidl takes on the anything but subtle subject of women traveling the globe for sex tourism, the film is controversial and hotly debated. Sometimes labeled as racist and vulgar, ‘Paradise: Love’ is a story about consensual sex for money between African men and older European women; in this case we have overweight middle-aged Austrian women in Kenya shacking up with younger well-endowed local men. More than prostitution, however, the search for sex becomes a quest for love and affection in a world seemingly bereft of anything but an emotional desert.

'Teresa' (Margarete Tiesel) is a 50-year old Austrian woman who has left her routine life at home for a trip to Kenya with her female friends. While it looks on the surface to be a paradise beach vacation, Teresa goes on a an emotionally trying journey in the search for love in the streets of Kenya, searching for her long lost soul mate in the face of every young African she meets. Prostituting young local men is last on her mind; rather, she seeks affection and companionship. But when she finds herself used again and again for her money and her ingenuous generosity, she herself feels marginalized and unworthy. This sets her on a path she never would have thought herself capable- from the search of vacation and adventure to a private and isolated hell, from a search of love to one of sex and prostitution, from a search of finding oneself to a lost and lonely path. -Vanessa McMahon.

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s film Paradise: Love (Paradies: Lieb, 2012) competed for the Palme d’Or at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. The sequel ‘Paradise: Faith’ won the Special Jury Prize at the 69th Venice Film Festival and the last of the trilogy, ‘Paradise: Hope’ premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Most recently, all three films screened at the 12th Translvania International Film Festival (31 May- 9 June 2013).

Peter Kazungu ... Munga

Ulrich Seidl - Director / Writer (screenplay) / Producer; Peter Kazungu ... Munga at 65th Cannes Film Festival for 'Paradise: Love' (2012).

Photos by Vanessa McMahon