Talia is a young Belgian woman of Senegalese heritage. Usually in these kind of stories the main character is isolated and rejected from the society they were born in but this is not the case with Talia - she is comfortable and happy with her life in Brussels but she wants to know more about her heritage and to meet her grandmother so she sets off to Senegal to achieve this dream.
Talia finds that the common traits she shares with the her parents countrymen are skin deep, that culturally she shares very little in common with them and for that she is constantly judged, she is also judged on pre-concieved notions she might have on the backwardness of Senegal - nothing she actually says or does promotes this. There was an interesting part where some unnamed boy her age challenges her to prove that she was a 'real African' by eating some pepper - this kind of discourse is constant throughout the film except for her friendship with a young woman named Malika who is slightly older than her who sells dreams in the form of buy a small bird and releasing it into the sky, this young woman lives next door and Talia and this Malika become firm friends.
The story is about Talia finding her roots and her family in Senegal, though she might feel 'African' in Belgium, in Africa she is definitely a European with a liberal, western European mindset and people judge her on that whatever features they have in common are usually ignored or derided - she is insulted with the insult 'toubab' on numerous occasions which is simlar to the term 'gringo' but actually means 'white person' which is what some of the natives of Dakar see Talia as.
I watched this on the plane back from South America where I had a similar voyage of discovery - there was a part of the film where she said home wasn't a country or a city but a feeling of belonging and acceptance and she might have not found that in Senegal but I definitely found that in South America. I really enjoyed this film and for me it is a worthy ten.
