ZIGEUNER

"There are already more gypsies in Europe than, for example, Danish people. Estimates range between 6 to 11 million people. Despite being everywhere they are mostly invisible. Nowadays Europeans know more about fish in the ocean than about gypsies. Our film tries to change that."

Stanislaw Mucha spent 30 days filming gypsies in East Slovakia. "Is it true that gypsies eat dogs?" is the question Mucha asks whenever he meets one of them for the first time. He confronts the gypsies with popular clichés. Gypsies are antisocial and dirty, they lie, fight and steal. They live in miserable huts, have tons of children. But he also shows their contagious joie de vivre and good humour, their generosity, their talent for self-irony and self-portrayal. Mucha depicts the truly dreadful circumstances under which gypsies live in this country of the European Union – no drinking water, no electricity nor waste disposal; racism, exclusion and open discrimination – without casting them as mere victims. He doesn't want to prove anything, he just wants us to look, and that's already asking a lot! A political film that goes beyond political correctness.