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Sabena

synopsis

1969: Sabena, the Belgian airline, launches its new Brussels-Tokyo line. The golden sixties are the decade of modernity, of a growing middle class and of cultures meeting for the first time. Belgians are traveling abroad en masse, and the world is coming to them. Youth cultures spread around the world and clash with conservative traditions. The world also opens up for Belgian village girl Helena. Her father, who was a pilot at Sabena, dies. At his funeral, Helena meets his Sabena colleagues and gets intrigued by the world her father knew so well, but that she and her mother were never part of. Helena wants to break out of the village and discover this fascinating big world. About 10,000 kilometers further in Tokyo City, Yayoi hears that Sabena is looking for Japanese flight attendants. This could be her escape from the rich but strict aristocratic life her parents have planned for her. What if East, West, South and North meet on the plane?

Director’statement

As a former journalist and experienced director, we want to tell stories that are relevant, entertain, make you laugh and move you. We love extraordinary arenas and one of a kind characters that are at the same time struggling, just like us. Not a forced search for diversity, but telling true international stories. Such as in the sixties when Sabena recruited Japanese stewardesses for its Tokyo line. How do Belgians experience the encounter with new cultures, and how does Yayoi experience the drop in a world that welcomes her, but at the same time asks whether she can eat with a knife and fork? Does this new world bring freedom for Helena and for Yayoi? But what is freedom, really? And do people long for different kinds of freedom depending on their social class, their culture, their gender, their age? Drama, satire, and situational humour go hand in hand. Positions are constantly switching in this world where nothing is the same as before, even though some would prefer it to be.

TFL PROGRAMME:
SeriesLab 2023

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