Romani Cinema: Short film programme
Film is a powerful medium for preserving cultural memory - yet Sinti and Roma communities are too often denied access to their own visual histories.
Patrin Films Ltd in collaboration with Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg , present two film programs that centre Romani* perspectives and challenge the ongoing erasure of their narratives.
Resisting Erasure 1 & 2
📽️ Program 1 explores self-representation and historical memory, while
📽️ Program 2 confronts the forces that continue to marginalize and silence Romani stories.
Join us on Friday, 6 June at 16:30 and 19:00 for two short film programmes and conversations that spotlight Romani cinema and resistance.
The Romani Gaze: Short film Programme
Patrin Films Ltd in collaboration with FILMFEST DRESDEN present: The Romani Gaze – Resistance and Reclamation.
In an age shaped by rising populism and growing divides, we find ourselves at a cultural crossroads—confronting urgent questions about belonging, representation, and justice.
With over 12 million Roma people living across Europe, a population larger than many European countries—their stories remain glaringly absent from our screens. For far too long, cinema has reflected a distorted image: one built on stereotypes and societal bias, rather than truth.
This programme breaks that mirror.
Featuring five bold, genre-spanning films, The Romani Gaze centres Roma voices with nuance, depth, and dignity. These stories refuse erasure and reclaim space in a medium that has too often silenced them.
For centuries, Roma communities have faced systemic exclusion - barred from equal access to housing, healthcare, education, and employment, and subjected to forced evictions, police violence, and racist abuse. Yet their resilience endures. These films are not just stories; they are acts of resistance.
In 15 MINUTES, director Sejad Ademaj follows a German Roma teenager whose ordinary evening spirals into a nightmare of looming deportation.
OMARA by Abel Santa honours Hungarian Roma painter Mara Oláh, whose fierce creativity turned prejudice into power.
In CARMEN, NO FEAR OF FREEDOM, Irene Baqué documents a trailblazing feminist Roma movement in Spain, confronting both racism and patriarchy.
JUSTICE, by Sifonios and Baraj, gives voice to a family in Greece demanding answers after a police killing.
And in NONCIA, Hamze Bytyci animates a vital, forgotten chapter of Roma resistance.
These films challenge injustice, reframe identity, and invite audiences to see with new eyes.
They are cinema as confrontation, as healing and above all, as reclamation.
For tickets please visit: https://www.filmfest-dresden.de/en/programme/online-programme
Live Podcast with Lisa Smith
Check out this upcoming live recorded episode where Canan Turan will talk with filmmaker and curator Lisa Smith about the cinematic representation of Romani and Traveller people in the UK and beyond and her artistic and political vision for films made by and about her community. Canan will ask Lisa also about her work at @akedikhea - International Festival of Romani Film, AVAZYA International Romani Film Professionals Network and her production company Patrin Films.
21. Mai 2024, 18:00 – 20:00
Berlin, Choriner Str. 10, 10119 Berlin, Deutschland
The podcast is being recorded in English.
Register via on this site or via: drakos@frauenkreise-berlin.de Free of charge and registration is not mandatory!
Canan Turan works as a freelance curator, currently for Berlinale Generation and Tallgrass Film Festival, as an independent researcher, film educator, writer and moderator. Lisa Smith is the co-curator of The International Festival of Romani Film: AKE DIKHEA? and the co-ordinator of AVAZYA: The Romani Filmmakers Network.
film.macht.kritisch. is a podcast created and hosted by Canan Turan about the *other* cinema that focuses on marginalized perspectives and challenges the status quo by telling stories beyond othering, stereotypes and tokenism: a truly anti-discriminatory, intersectional feminist, queer and decolonial cinema.