SYNOPSIS
A satirical fable about a Little Girl who uses clever capitalism and market manipulation to take a sad lemonade stand to terrifyingly amazing heights.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
When our parents teach us the “value of a dollar” – it’s because “money doesn’t grow on trees, you need to work to earn it” — yet true wealth isn’t a thing you can put a dollar figure on.
Lemons, like money, aren’t naturally occurring. They are fabricated by society. But it gets worse as our world starts to care more about social image over social interaction. Then that fabrication starts creating class divides & exclusivity – which has the power and influence to translate across cultures, religions and identities. Unlike Charles Kane (Citizen Kane), we wonder if our future children will even experience something worth calling a childhood.
When Life Gives You Lemons is written by two POC brothers, who have had to forcibly move around the world; recent immigrants to Canada. Similarly, the film was written, directed, filmed by immigrants, starring Nana Efua Mansa Damptey (a child to an immigrant Ghanaian family) and 10 year old Naomi Sogbein.