A Blooming Business (2009)

Flowers love people. Anyway, that is what the flower growing industry is trying to propagate. But whether flowers actually do love people, well, that remains the question. The largest percentage of flowers produced in third world countries, where the pay checks are low and the environment constraints are flexible, is auctioned in The Netherlands. "A Blooming Business" is a poetic documentary about people in Kenya who are imprisoned by the power of the global flower growing industry. The dilemmas of the industry grow painfully clear and a dark world of oppression, sexual abuse and terrible working conditions unfolds. There is only one conclusion possible: the smell of the imported rose is not sweet, but bitter. Pure observation goes unnoticed, hand in hand, with straightforward comments about life and living from the main characters throughout this film. The camera is present and absent at the same time. It reshapes the documentary. With great humanism, Van Zantvoort shows us literally and figuratively another world; a world in which the life of each human being is precious.