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The Village of Roses

Director: Hanna Heilborn
Sweden, Italy, 86 minutes, 2023, documentary

11-year-old Denise is making her way to school by foot, with her teasing cousins Walter and Jonathan. At home, her mother Puffa is calling the authorities, to find out why the school bus again has not stopped by their village. Some call this suburb of Milan a Roma camp. Puffa calls it Villaggio delle Roses, the Village of Roses.
Over a period of six years, we follow Denise and her family fighting for their rights to exist and their homes not to be demolished. In combination with TV archives and telephone conversations between the film director and her friend, Roma activist and actress Dijana Pavlović, the story step by step dismantles the consequences of hateful populist media rhetoric and puts to surface the widespread oppression of the Roma minority in today’s Europe, which appears even more aggressive than ever.

Film screening dates: 27.11.2023 — 10.12.2023
Portrait of the film director
Режисерка
Hanna Heilborn is co-owner of the prominent production company Story AB since 2001. She has been awarded multiple times and worldwide for her trilogy of animated documentaries Hidden, Slaves and Sharaf, directed with David Aronowitsch, among them an IDFA award for Best Short Documentary (Slaves). Heilborn is educated in film at NY Film School and in scriptwriting at Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. Since her start in filmmaking in 1999, she has explored the use of documentaries in various visual forms and for various platforms, from TV and Cinema to Arts Exhibitions.