Latcho Drom (PG)

Director: Tony Gatlif
France, 1993, 1 hour 43 minutes

A journey west, from India through Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and France to Spain, with stops along the way, that dramatizes the Roma's nomadic culture. Although some scenes are acted, there is no dialogue or narration and only partial translation of some songs. The film illustrates the variety of conditions in which the Romany people live; earthbound nomads in the hot deserts of Asia, ironsmiths and abjectly poor tree-dwellers in the frozen plains of Eastern Europe, and craftspeople and traders in the hills and coasts of north Africa and western Europe. Gatlif focuses on the elemental essentials of this life: water, the wheel, fire, beasts of burden and of sustenance, colourful clothes, jewelry, musical instruments, song, and dance that celebrate their distinctive shared values of family, traveling, love, rejection and persecution.

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