Mamadou Diallo

Washingtonia starts when the giraffe's heart can no longer be heard. Washingtonia is an alternative name for Athens, a place where people, like animals, fall into summertime sadness because of the heat. Washingtonia is the only palm tree whose heart is not devoured by the red beetle. Because its heart is small and dry and no one likes small and dry hearts.

Mati, a divorced mother of a young daughter, makes a living selling bric-a-bric from a wheelbarrow and dreams of opening a snack bar. But she falls for the charms of Naago, a cop, and it's only when the Tajaboom festival (at which women and men switch roles) arrives that her opportunity for escape emerges.

This tale of childhood and adolescence is told through brief sequences that take place in the life of a modest family from the Pas-de-Calais region during the forties, fifties and sixties. Paul, the main character, who we meet when he’s 5, 13 and 18, is the throughline of this tale told in a fragmentary way well adapted to the scattered nature of memories.