Freedom Fighter
It’s often been said that the reason so many people are ignorant about the story of the world’s 12 million Romany people, is because nobody has been prepared to tell it. But there’s one Gypsy man who has spent the last 30 years producing and directing films that have done exactly that.
Earlier this week, French Romany film director Tony Gatlif's "Korkoro" (Freedom), a film about Gypsies rounded up in Nazi-occupied France, earned him top honours at the Montreal World Film Festival. The film, which is set for release in Europe in December, stars Alain Blazquez, Marie-Josee Croze and Marc Lavoine. It won the Grand Prix des Americas prize from the jury as well as the top audience award.
In Korkoro, a Gypsy family travels the French roads during the Second World War, followed by Little Claude, a young boy seeking a new family after his parents "left and never returned". Upon reaching a town where they traditionally stop for a few months and work in the vineyards, they learn that a new law forbids them from being nomadic.
Theodore, the town's mayor, and Miss Lundi, the schoolteacher, protect and help the Gypsies. Despite this, they are arrested and placed in an internment camp. Theodore manages to rescue them and gives them a piece of property where they must settle. But the Gypsies' deeply ingrained thirst for freedom makes this sedentary lifestyle difficult to bear. After Theodore and Miss Lundi are arrested for resistance, the Gypsies decide they must get back on the move in order to remain free.
“There’s something about nationalism that exasperates me, borders, I think we have to do away with them,” says French actress Marie-Josee Croze, who plays a schoolteacher in the film who makes false passports for the Resistance. “The world is small, we’re all human, we’re all the same. Problems don’t exist for just one nation – they exist for all human beings. I detest nationalism, just detest it.”
“Our ‘friend’ Adolf (Hitler) believed he was part of a pure race that was better than any other, and that allowed him to treat others like he did – the Jews, the Roma, the French, the English, the Poles, everybody. It’s disgusting, this idea that you’re superior to others.”
She 
says that was a big reason why she did Korkoro. Living in France and knowing the history, Croze deplores “the opportunism of the French who used the Nazis as an alibi to get rid of people they themselves didn’t like – in this case, the Gypsies.”
She hopes the movie will prompt an awakening in France to that sordid history, as well as remind people that there were some courageous French men and women during that period, too – like the real-life woman her character is based on, who helped save Jews and British airman from capture.
The praise for the film will encourage many people to also learn about European Romany history. But it’s just the latest Romany-inspired production from Director Tony Gatlif, who is 61 years old today.
Tony Gatlif was born as Michel Dahmani on September 10th 1948, in Algiers in Algeria. He has a mixed Romany and Algerian heritage. After a childhood in Algiers, Gatlif arrived in France in 1960 following the Algerian War of Independence. Gatlif struggled for years to break into the French film industry, playing in several productions until directing his first film, La Tête en ruine, in 1975. He followed it with the 1979 La Terre au ventre, a story of the Algerian War of Independence.
But since the 1981 release of Corre, gitano, Gatlif's work has largely been focused on the Romany people from whom he partially traces his descent.
After making Gaspard et Robinson in 1990, Gatlif spent 1992 and 1993 shooting Latcho Drom (Good Road) which was awarded numerous prizes. This feature-length documentary deals with Gypsy culture throughout the world around the theme of Romany music and dance. In 1997, he produced Gadjo Dilo (Stupid Non-Gypsy) which also received many international awards. In the film, Stephane, a young French musicologist from Paris travels to Romania in search of the female Gypsy singer Nora Luca, to whom his father had frequently listened before his death. But finds much much more when he gets there. Most of the film was shot at the village of Cretulesti outside Bucharest and many of the actors were local Romany people.
Watch this scene from Gadjo Dilo:
Tony Gatlif Filmography
- La Tête en ruine (1975)
- La Terre au ventre (1978)
- Corre gitano (1981)
- Canta gitano (1981)
- Les Princes (1982)
- Rue du départ (1985)
- Pleure pas my love (1989)
- Gaspard et Robinson (1990)
- Latcho Drom (1992)
- Mondo (1995)
- Gadjo dilo (1997)
- Je suis né d'une cigogne (1998)
- Vengo (2000)
- Swing (2001)
- Exils (2004)
- Transylvania (2006)
- Korkoro (2009)