Grantee's Film Documenting Roma Experience in Italy Wins UCCA Prize

Me, My Gypsy Family & Woody Allen, a documentary by 19-year-old Laura Halilovic, won the UCCA Prize 2009 at the Bellaria Film Festival in Italy. The film received special mention by the jury "for the ability to describe in a soft, at times ironic, but always direct way her own story, that of her family, and the difficult conditions of Gypsies in Italy." The UCCA Prize is awarded to the top two documentaries at the festival, and the prize-winning films receive the opportunity to be screened in at least 20 Italian cities. 

Halilovic's documentary—produced by Zenit Arti Audiovisive with support from the Open Society Institute Roma Decade Matching Fund, Italian broadcaster RAI 3, the Italian Ministry of Equal Opportunity, Piemonte Doc Film Fund and others—retraces the 20-year evolution of a community. Halilovic introduces viewers to her family, friends, and all who have stood by her over the years. She even gives voice to those who do not approve of her family's presence in the neighborhood.

Laura Halilovic wanted to become a director since the age of nine, and as a child she told her parents that she wanted to become Woody Allen. In 2006, with assistance from Tosco and Rondolino, she started shooting her first short film, Illusion, a story about love among a group of teenagers. It won first prize at the 2007 Under-18 Film Festival in Turin, when Halilovic was just 17. 

Me, My Gypsy Family & Woody Allen, Halilovic's first feature-length film, tells the story of her family, who came to Italy from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until 1997, they lived in a camp near Turin's airport. Today they live in the district of Falchera Nuova, on the outskirts of the city, where she works for a youth association that assists Roma children with schooling.

"Many films and documentaries have been made about our tradition and our way of living," Halilovic said, "but in such a way that we can never really identify ourselves with it. Directors and scriptwriters still show the world of Gypsies through stereotypes. They ignore that some of us don't even "look like Roma people," and that many who still live as nomads would love to have a public housing apartment and to send their children to school."

"People are still afraid, they don't trust us. They turn away as soon as they hear the word Gypsy. That makes us feel rejected in a country which is not our own, in which we are trying to build a future."