Viàvosges

In 1946, shortly after the atomic bombings, an American army team shot a documentary about ‘defeated Japan’. Reel 11004 concerning Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be classified top secret for 36 years. Mirabelle Fréville has found it and edited it to denounce the first censorship in nuclear history.

Ayi comes from a rural area of Eastern China and doesn’t have the residential permit that would allow her to work in Shanghai. Yet, she has been cooking in the streets for twenty years, in an old neighbourhood soon to be demolished. The film unveils the chaos of an ultra-modern city aiming to wipe out so-called substandard practices and to deport an unwanted population.