ŠUTO ORIZARI - promised land

"ŠUTO ORIZARI – Promised Land" is a documentary about Roma in Macedonia, the only Romani local community in Europe, Šuto Orizari, or as Roma call it, Šutka. It was filmed with a digital camera by a small team in four days last summer. It is generally known that Roma do not trust strangers.
In order to cause as little disruption as possible and record an authentic pulse of life in Roma our team only consisted of a cameraman and a reporter. It was a carefully prepared project, but intentionally shot in a “guerilla” way, which proved to be a very wise decision.
"ŠUTO ORIZARI – Promised Land" is a true moment in Romani everyday of a specific Romani town where the Roma create their own fate and make decisions at the governmental level. Macedonian Roma are uniquely recognized as a nation, and have got their own member of parliament. Through individual testimonies of Roma, the documentary presents an hour of joys and hardships with 45,000-60,000 citizens of Šutka.
The film was shot at the time of traditional Romani weddings with rituals going on for an entire week. Parallel to an anthropological presentation of Romani everyday, the file rouge of the film is the traditional Romani wedding. We have got exclusive insight into several days of world famous “queen of gypsy music” Esma Redžepova’s nephew’s wedding. Esma give a story of her life and describes the tradition of Romani wedding in the film.
The film is aimed at Roma and non-Roma experiencing difficulties in finding a “common language” – it may offer solutions to issues of difference and the resulting intolerance.

Director and screenwriter MAJA PAVLIN
Director of photography ALEŠ ŽIVEC
Editor ANDREJ MODIC
Production:TV Slovenia