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Salcuta Filan, a young Roma woman from Romania, and her two children have been living in France since 2002. When they first arrived, they lived in a caravan in a shantytown in the Paris suburbs. Today, they consider themselves French citizens.
A filmed chronicle of 15 years of positive struggle to make a home for themselves in a country where a considerable majority still believes that they are unable to integrate.
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Just as every morning, Salcuta listens to the radio before going to work. "Roma don’t try to integrate in France! They have to go home! ..." a politician says. Salcuta has often heard such remarks since she came to France in 2002 with her two young children. His words revealed a rising wave of prejudice towards the Roma community. Are they destined to remain third-class Europeans?
From the eviction from the shantytown and the destruction of her caravan by police forces until the time she moves into the apartment at nr. 8 Avenue Lenin in the town of Achères, 15 years went by. Over this long period, a close relationship has developed between the filmmakers and this courageous Roma woman and her family.
Today, Salcuta has a job, an apartment and she pays taxes. But integration is not just an administrative matter and, with the economic crisis, other problems arise. But Salcuta meets problems head on, because as a European she has made her choice: home is right here.
Festivals and Awards:
2018: BIDF – Budapest Inernational Documentary Festival - official competition. January 2018.FESTIVAL - en compétition- janvier 2018
2017: Selected for the « Intl. Programme » - 60th DOK Leipzig Festival, 30 Oct. - 5 Nov., Leipzig, Germany.