Eat Bitter

A local construction worker and a Chinese engineer are assigned to build a bank in Bangui the capital of the Central African Republic one of the poorest countries in the world But time is short and resources are scarce and there are rumours in the countryside that a new civil war is brewing And as if all this wasnt bad enough their relationships to their wives are falling apart Eat Bitter mirrors the existential and mundane problems of the two men while an unlikely friendship and mutual trust blossoms between them However the chaotic microcosm of the construction site also mirrors Chinas contradictory role in 21st century Africa with the bank itself as the ultimate symbol of money power and illusion Director duo Pascale ApporaGnekindy and Ningyi Sun themselves represent each of the two cultures and their film has a unique eye for the human fallibility and irony of it all but also for how we can reach each other despite all our many differences