Tragedy strikes when Ardjani returns after six months. With her help as interpreter, Stephane systematically records and documents local Romani musicians and singers. Soon he falls in love with Sabina, a dancer who performs with Izidor at local celebrations. The village Roma gradually accept Stephane, and he adapts himself into the community. ![]() Izidor welcomes this disoriented gadjo (non-Rom) as some form of godsend, and claiming to know the voice on the cassette, leads Stephan back to his village. Late one night, cold and with nowhere to sleep, he encounters Izidor, an elderly Romani musician, drunk and declaiming theatrically against the Romanian authorities who have imprisoned his son Ardjani. Stephane carries a recording of Nora Luca's voice, hoping that someone will recognize it. ![]() It was the tale of a young Parisian named Stephane who, having embarked on a sentimental quest to find a Gypsy singer named Nora Luca, much beloved by his deceased father, ends up living for several months in a Romani settlement somewhere outside Bucharest. One day in June, around fifteen people gathered and sat through the film in silence. It was, of course, Gadjo Dilo, and he believed its broad distribution would be the single most effective thing that could be done to promote Roma rights in Europe.ĭimitrina obtained the video cassette and invited a group of Roma and non-Roma to view it in her Budapest office. ![]() A New York colleague of hers, himself a rights activist, had sent her a message that summer, declaring rapturously that he had seen an "extraordinary" film by a French director of Algerian and Romani descent. She said she had and recounted the following anecdote. Last December, I asked Dimitrina Petrova, Executive Director of the ERRC, if she had seen Tony Gatlif's latest film, Gadjo Dilo. He studied literature at McGill and Oxford Universities.) ( Erik Rutherford is a writer living in Paris. Contributions to the Romani identity discussions are welcome. Romani activist Gregory Kwiek, film critic László Orsós, and the ERRC's Claude Cahn respond. In the article, Erik Rutherford offers the view that Tony Gatlif's film Gadjo Dilo has had and will continue to have a positive impact. Notebook section of this issue of Roma Rights opens a discussion on Romani identity. Tech credits are all pro.Tony Gatlif's film Gadjo Dilo furthers the Roma cause Gatlif’s direction is fluid and mobile and his pacing deceptively skillful, given the thinness of the material. Serban, too, is immensely likable as the crafty old Izidor. Though warmhearted, they’re portrayed as equally bigoted and xenophobic as the local Romanians, and driven by the emotion of the moment rather than by any fixed moral standards.ĭuris is good as the initially reserved Frenchman, but it’s Hartner who fires the picture, whether mooning some jeering locals, engaging in breathtaking dirty talk with Duris as their passions mount, or spontaneously dancing for him while he dutifully records a song in a bar. But in its latter stages, as local tensions between Romanians and Romanies are re-ignited, the movie takes time out for more serious social points, not all of them pro-Gypsy. Pic trowels on ethnicity by the cartload, with lotsa sequences of bighearted Romanies singing, dancing, smashing plates and basically missing no opportunity for a barn dance. But just when Sabina and Stephane are about to exchange bodily fluids, things turn nasty with the arrival of Izidor’s son, Adriani (Florin Moldovan), a Gypsy Mafioso just out of jail. She quickly warms to the modest young Frenchman, while Izidor eases his transition into the suspicious, tightly knit community. Speaking only a few words of Romany and zero Romanian, he communicates with the locals via Sabina (Hartner), a lusty young peasant woman who’s returned home from a bad marriage. Next morning, Stephane becomes an object of curiosity in the community, and is immediately dubbed a crazy gadjo (stranger, or outsider). Arriving in a village at night, he falls in with an old drunk, Izidor (Izidor Serban), and ends up sleeping under his roof. ![]() Setting this time is wintry Romania, whither arrives young Parisian Stephane (Romain Duris), obsessed with tracking down a legendary folk singer, Nora Luca, whose voice he carries with him on a tape. “Stranger” is a satisfying conclusion to everything he has to say on the subject, as well as his smoothest movie to date. The French-based helmer, of Algerian and Gypsy descent, has veered from the bleak and uncompromising to the colorful and exotic in his various depictions of Romany life.
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