The Guardian: Roma Film-Makers Bring Seven Films to a First-of-Its-Kind Showcase in Seville

Seven films made by Roma film-makers are screening together this week at the Seville European Film Festival in Spain, in a programme its organisers describe as the first of its kind, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

The showcase, titled Raising Romani Gaze, sits inside the wider Seville festival. It brings together directors from across Europe whose work centres Roma characters and stories told from inside the community rather than from the outside.

A Programme Built Over a Decade

According to The Guardian, one of the curators is Katalin Bársony, a Romany film-maker from Hungary who also leads the Romédia Foundation, an NGO that uses storytelling, film and visual archives to support Roma self-representation. She told the paper the programme had been about ten years in the making.

Bársony said Roma, despite being Europe's largest minority, remain among the most underserved and invisible when it comes to their own art. The Guardian cited an estimate of 10 to 12 million Roma living across Europe.

The Films in the Spotlight

The best known title in the lineup is I Matter, from Romanian actor and film-maker Alina Șerban. The film follows a young woman reckoning with her Romany identity as she comes of age. It screened earlier this year in a spotlight section at the Venice Film Festival, where, according to The Guardian, it won the audience award.

Șerban told the paper she grew up seeing Roma on screen mostly as villains or as something exotic, and that her film was meant to build a different understanding. "It's work made by us, not just about us," she said.

She also told The Guardian that every decision she made on the film felt like an act of resistance, because she was among the first to bring this perspective to the screen.

The programme also includes a documentary by Bársony about a young man born in Germany to Roma parents who is deported to Kosovo, and a film by Spanish director Jero de los Santos that explores queer and Romany perspectives.

Nottingham based film-maker Charles Newland is in Seville with the short Smooth the Edges, which he described to The Guardian as the first film funded by the British Film Institute from a Romany director with a Romany producer and a lead Romany cast. The short follows a young woman weighing whether to hide her background to avoid discrimination at work.

Why It Matters Beyond the Festival

Festival sidebars rarely make international headlines, but this one touches a wider European story. The Guardian noted that Roma communities face longstanding discrimination, including difficulties accessing decent housing and the segregation of children in schools.

Bársony told the paper that since the silent film era, Romany people have mostly been cast in passive roles defined by an outside gaze. The Seville programme, she said, offers what she called narrative sovereignty, letting Roma film-makers tell their own stories. Șerban said she hoped that in some years there would be 50 or 100 films like hers, and described feeling like an ambassador without choosing to be one.

For the film business, the showcase is also a signal about who gets to hold the camera. Curated programmes like this often help films find distributors, broadcasters and later festival slots, and a Venice audience prize gives at least one title a head start. Whether that translates into wider releases has not been announced.

What Has Been Confirmed

What is on the record is the programme itself, the films named by The Guardian and the comments from Șerban, Bársony and Newland. Release plans, sales deals and audience figures for the Seville screenings have not been reported.

For now, the story is a simple one: seven films, one festival and a group of directors who want audiences to see their communities on their own terms. As Șerban put it to The Guardian, "Films bring change."