Leaving to Remain

In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.

A Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.

Roma are an important part of Ukraine's population. There are quite a large number of them living in the country—between fifty and one hundred thousand. This documentary shows the peculiarities of the Gypsy people's life in modern society. You will see the stories of five Gypsy barons who will talk about the traditions of their people and reveal some secrets that were previously known only to the Roma.

Miko is a truck driver, his father is Romani, and above all he is a man who wanted to help those in need. When the Czech government was looking for reasons not to take in a few dozen children from Greek refugee camps after the chemical attacks on Syrian civilians in 2018, Miko took justice into his own hands and, together with the Czechs Helping initiative, prepared facilities for child refugees. However, government officials gave priority to political interests. Will parliamentary elections and a change of ministries save the situation? An unflattering but accurately portrayal of the Czech Republic as a country that will only offer a helping hand when it is worthwhile.

A documentary about a young Finnish Romany Carmen, 11, who lives with her grandmother and aunt in the suburb of a small town in Northern Finland.

Moved by a sense of outrage, David Scheffel, a Canadian anthropologist, is determined to help the impoverished Roma (Gypsies) rebuild their community in the eastern Slovakian village of Svinia. So-called “white” Svinia is a picturesque, typical Slovak village with well-kept homes, gardens, a store and a school. Some 300 metres past the last home is “black” Svinia, where the Roma live in squalid tenement blocks and one-room huts of sticks and mud-with no clean water or sewage facilities and with little hope of employment. Many Svinians, whose homes and gardens are regularly burglarized by the desperate Roma, have lost all patience and sympathy. Throughout Eastern Europe, the painful transition from communism to democracy has relegated the Roma to the farthest, most grotesque margins of society. The Gypsies of Svinia is a testament to the firm resolve of Scheffel and the Roma to make things better.

Documentary film Heavy Heart arose as a part of ethnomusicological research Silalo panori / Cold water (2014 – 2017) of ancient Roma songs. These songs are usually connected with memories and experiences of their interprets. Documentary in a mosaic-like way traces the way of the original Roma music transport to the next generation or also how it ceases to exist under the influence of social changes.

The young director Tomas Vynikal arrives at the Roma ghetto in search of humanity. With an authentic approach, he finds true friendship, but also human corruption. Everything is kept in the dark when the city of Prerov sells the ghetto together with its inhabitants to a private company for the purpose of new housing construction. This company will only go so far to demolish part of the houses and end up insolvent. The work is also a picture of current social problems in the Czech Republic, where human dwellings are meaninglessly devastated. These inhabitants receive new rental flats from the state, thus another ghetto is being created and society is moving in a catch 22 circle. The film contains time spent from September 2010 to September 2020.

The TV biopic maps the fate of Roma writer Elena Lackova in an intimately personal way. As viewers, thanks to the author's authentic voiceover and preserved archive footage, we delve into her memories of the Holocaust and the communist dictatorship in the context of the play Burning Gypsy Camp. We uncover the circumstances of growing up in a gypsy settlement, her first literary achievements, and her struggle to combine her personal and professional life. We also get to know her life story through her great-granddaughter and actress Alžbeta Ferencova, known as Zea or the serial Iveta (dir. Jan Hřebejk, 2022). The parallel between the life of the writer and that of her great-granddaughter, who also embarked on an artistic career and broke down stereotypes about the role of Roma women in society, creates a timely and transferable story. A crucial motif of the poetic film is also the unprecedented emancipation of the writer for the time.

Otherness in otherness. What does it mean to be different in a community that is itself excluded from society? The documentary follows the fate of Roma who have become a minority in a minority society. Roma gays and transvestite search for their living space and dream of working abroad. A legless father of five longs for a wheelchair. A Roma grandmother sacrifices her life for the health of her beloved grandson. Will Emil, a Roma man who has found faith in God, be able to save his son from alcohol? Four stories from the poorest Roma settlements in Slovakia aim to break down prejudices between the Roma community and the white majority.

The protagonist of Dajori (mother in Romani) is forty-five-year-old Marie Hučková, who lives with her husband in Varnsdorf. After her younger sister Iveta ends up on the streets with her nine children, she decides to take her own fate and theirs firmly into her own hands and attempts to break out of the vicious circle of poverty that characterises their hometown. This sensitive film, which captures three years of a newly formed family's life together, follows the small joys and daily challenges of caring for others and asks whether a mother's love can overcome the dysfunctional system in which socially excluded localities find themselves.

Muzafer Bislim comes up with some of his most insightful songs while sitting on the floor, recording lyrics into a cassette recorder bought at a flea market. A poet and songwriter who collaborates with the biggest names in Romani music, the 54-year old lives a life of modest means with his family in Shutka, Macedonia. Stored in the corner of his one-room house is a tottering, ceiling-high stack of handwritten, 25,000-word, multi-dialect dictionary of the oldest and most obscure words in the Romani language, which he has painstakingly collected over 35 years. When he's invited to the International Biennial of Poets held in Paris, he sees the trip as an opportunity to have his dictionary published. A testament to the endurance of a people who have been scattered across Europe, the dictionary is not only a work of art but also a rare link to a divided past.