Maverick Award nominee David Dusa’s FLEURS DU MAL (FLOWERS OF EVIL) is a shot across the bow from the next wave of moviemakers – a filmmaking cohort raised on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, rather than elaborately constructed (or digitally created) Hollywood products.

Beginning with a man in Tunisia burning himself to death in December, 2010, and continuing through the Syrian and Lybian revolutions, pro-democracy rebellions erupted across the Middle East in the “Arab Spring.” Dusa’s film is the first to document the on-the-ground reality of technology-fuelled social change now sending shockwaves through the Arab world. It also has the eternally captivating power of a good old-fashioned love story.

Gecko, a young, carefree Parisian street-dancer, meets Anahita, an Iranian in exile, and finds himself tangled up in her history and the live internet broadcasts of the chaos in Iran following the controversial election in June of 2009. When the Islamic government cracked down on the traditional media, the citizens started broadcasting information through the internet. These brutal images reached the world directly – and now David Dusa’s FLEURS DU MAL personalizes them.