Roma Quixote

Documentary, Bulgaria, 61 min., 2013

Director: Petya Nakova, Nina Pehlivanova

Script by: Petya Nakova, Nina Pehlivanova

DoP: Dimitar Kostov

Production: Ars Digital Studio - Ivan Tonev, Blagomir Alexiev

With the support of the National Film Center

The film follows the events in the lives of four characters for a year.

A curious breed of people lives in the Roma neighborhood in the town of Kyustendil. Through observation, the film follows the events in the lives of four of them (over a period of one year). In the gypsy neighborhood there is a landscaped part where the heroes live and a ghetto, and in the middle is a square with shops and cafes. There are parodic contrasts and inevitable similarities between them.

Valerie ("Roma Quixote") is a middle-aged man. Extremely intelligent and sensitive amateur actor and poet. He works as a reporter for the Bulgarian National Radio in Sofia, but lives in a panel building in Kyustendil. Although he has outgrown his origins and ethnicity, he cannot cut his umbilical cord with the Roma neighborhood and spends his time there every day. In order to live "like a Bulgarian" in the city, he pays off a large loan, which forces his wife to emigrate to Greece. The tape touches some of the hero's life's "mills".

The parents of another heroine are also on the move: Delilah. She graduated from hairdressing college and experienced the "dream" prom, which looks like a lavish wedding (and in fact displaces weddings in Roma neighborhoods by at least a few years). Like any young person, she is on the verge of a life choice: to study, to work, to marry her longtime friend or to help her parents in Sweden?

Svetla, a Bessarabian Bulgarian from Ukraine, came from abroad. She started a family with Zhivko - a man of Roma origin, living in the neighborhood, with whom they have two beautiful straw-blond boys and a harmonious relationship. The film follows the first visit of Svetla's mother from Ukraine.

If the borders are open and blurred today, for the last character Emo they are just narrow. He is in the eighth grade and was born and raised in the real ghetto. He believes that integration is "going somewhere," and when asked "where do you want to integrate," he replies, "Ah, I'm sitting here." His parents graduated from third grade. As an exotic accent in the migrations, a group of Dutch people sneak in, who come as representatives of NGOs to enrich the lives of the children in the neighborhood.