Korkoro (2010)

Directed by

Tony Gatlif

Genre

drama film

Country

France

Runtime

1h 51m

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 33 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A band of Romani people struggle to survive in France during World War II. A local teacher helps them by forging documents to escape the Nazis.

tragicslow-burnearnestsomberresilienthistorically groundedintimate

What happens

Korkoro ("Alone" in Romani) is a 2009 French drama film written and directed by Tony Gatlif, starring Francophone actors Marc Lavoine, Marie-Josée Croze and James Thiérrée. The film's cast were of many nationalities such as Albanian, Kosovar, Georgian, Serbian, French, Norwegian, and nine Romani people Gatlif recruited in Transylvania. Based on an anecdote about the Second World War by the Romani historian Jacques Sigot, the film was inspired by a Romani who escaped the Nazis with help from French villagers. It depicts the rarely documented subject of Porajmos (the Romani Holocaust). Other than a band of Romani people, the film has a character based on Yvette Lundy, a French teacher who was active in the French resistance and deported to a concentration camp for forging passports for Romani. Gatlif had intended to make a documentary but the lack of supporting documents led him to present it as a drama. The film premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival, winning the Grand Prize of the Americas, amongst other awards. It was released in France as Liberté in February 2010, where it grossed $601,252; revenues from Belgium and the United States brought the total to $627,088. The film's music, composed by Tony Gatlif and Delphine Mantoulet, received a nomination in the Best Music Written for a Film category at the 36th annual César Awards. Korkoro has been described as a "rare cinematic tribute" to those killed in the Porajmos. In general, it received positive reviews from critics, including praise for having an unusually leisurely pace for a Holocaust film. Critics regarded it as one of the director's best works, and with Latcho Drom, the "most accessible" of his films. The film is considered to show Romani in a non-stereotypical way, far from their clichéd depictions as musicians. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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