It is high the banner of the Gypsy soul who is not

Often mentioned, the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Gypsies - between 250,000 and 500,000, the figures remain imprecise - during the second world war had never been treated in the cinema. Tony Gatlif ("Gadjo dilo", "Latcho Drom",...) focused in this project for years. Twenty-five years ago, the Director asked the great Gypsy writer Matéo Maximoff, he considered his spiritual father, to make people who had known this time. But, as soon as they addressed the issue of the deportation, the vents closed. "By writing the scenario, explains the Director, I could approach the reasons for the silence that surrounds"Samudaripen"the genocide of Roma.". Gypsies are afraid of ghosts. After the war, when they realized that hundreds of thousands of them died were exterminated, they were afraid to awaken the dead, fear that they return. Afraid to talk about. Today, it is finished, but this fear existed into the 1980s.

When, later, Jacques Chirac mentioned the idea to bring into the Pantheon the righteous - these men and women who rescued the victims of Nazi barbarism of the Holocaust-, Gatlif realized that is always the Jews but never spoke of Gypsies. It is by meeting with a teacher, resistant in the Marne, Yvette Lundy, a former deported, that he began to construct a scenario. Then, he discovered the history of the notary who saved a family interned at the camp of Montreuil-Bellay in him selling his house for 1 symbolic franc so that its members be more scrutinized as nomadic. Unfortunately, the appeal of the road was stronger, and the family was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.

The fear of stones

"Freedom" is thus organized around two fair, Miss Monday, teacher (Marie-Josée Croze), and the veterinarian Théodore (Marc Lavoine). Their paths cross of a family of Gypsies who flees across fields, avoiding possible villages, in fear of getting caught. When they are arrested and locked up with hundreds of others in a camp, Theodore and Miss Monday will do everything to save them from deportation. Braving the prohibited and despite the growing hostility of the village, the veterinarian will sell the home of his ancestors, which they spend with horror. Indeed, they are unable to live between the four walls of a House. They are afraid of the stones as they are, according to them, the trace of those who lived here and have become ghosts. The fear is always wake them up.

Similarly, they do not include the possibility of a valves or a water pipeline. In a strong scene, we see one of the central figures of the film, the called Taloche (James Thiérrée), open bottom valves for "free" water that will flow to large waves on the stairs. In short, madness took place, which does not simplify the cohabitation with Aboriginal people, that festers. Finally, the Gypsies will leave to the sly and hit the road. They will be quickly caught up by fate.

Tony Gatlif, which certainly is the best film for a long time, the latter tend to go a little in a spin, manages to make the madness of the Gypsy soul, its superstitions, fears and beliefs, while the encasing a scenario of conventional invoice. Merit lies in its own way of filming to avoid the clichés of the re-enactment. Here, not Nazi officers barking gutturale way their orders, push-ups before black step, step of German shepherds the drooling at the lips. The Director captures faces, eyes, hands. Above all, he was able bring together great players he manages with great accuracy. A sobriety of Marc Lavoine and Marie-Josée Croze, he confronts the folly of a James Thiérrée, which composed a unforgettable character of Taloche, incredible naivety, poetry, purity and fantasy. It is high the banner of the Gypsy, soul who is not.