The good life

Official selection Tribeca Film Festival 2011

CPH:DOX 2011: Doc Alliance Award

Official selection HOT DOCS 2011

Best Documentary award: Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival 2011

IDFA Competition for Feature length Documentary 2010

The Good Life
- from the award winning director of Enemies of Happiness

Past was paradise - present is hell

20 Euros for two weeks. This is what is left for the two women, mother (83) and daughter (56) in Eva Mulvad's black family portrait from Portugal's Costa del Sol. But things have not always been like that. The family used to be wealthy and passed down a fortune through generations. But now the money is gone. The daughter, Anne Mette, and her mother have traded the villa for a small apartment, where they now live on the Mother's small pension. All the same the daugther does not quite grasp the fact that the days of servants, beachfront property and lounging about by the pool are gone for good.

There is hardly anything left to take to the pawnshop and credit from friends and local stores is running out. As times get tougher, the mother sends her spoiled daughter out to make money. But how do you find a job when you are 56 years old, act like a teenager and have never done a days' work in your life? One final rescue attempt fails when the daughter desperately proposes to work as a prostitute. But her mother's reply is "You're too old - they don't want old meat".  With empty pockets, a rich kid attitude and a blank CV - what will happen to the poor couple?