THE FLOWER BRIDGE

Costica Ahir lives with his daughters Maria and Alexandra and his son Alexie in the small village of Aciu in the Republic of Moldova. The children’s mother is working in Italy to earn the living that their father’s small farm cannot provide. The plan was for her to spend two years abroad – enough to pay off the family’s debts, send the children to better schools, and decorate the house. By now she has been gone for almost four years. The girls attend a grammar school, but the house has yet to be decorated and nobody knows when the mother will be back. The links with her are regular phone-calls and letters – and a big blue bag with presents from a sun-drenched world.
Thomas Ciulei unobtrusively yet intimately documents the Moldavian family’s day-to-day life in the months January to April 2007. It’s a time of year when the little wooden house looks likely to sink into the mud any minute, and the fog rarely lifts from the valleys. Viewers might expect resignation and sorrow in a family torn apart and living under the difficult circumstances typical for the entire region. Certainly, Costica Ahir suffers pangs of conscience for depriving his hard-working children of their childhood, he worries that his grain harvest will make a loss, and he is terrified of falling ill. But the family holds on to its hopes and dreams, and the father directs the children’s happiness with loving severity. An impressive insight into a world on the fringes of Europe.