"Toto and his sisters," the work of Romanian director Alexander Nanau. Filmed in 2014, the film has so far won many international awards including a French Culture Award in the category of student cinema at the Cannes Film Festival.
The titular protagonists are ten-year-old Totonel and his teenage sisters, Andreea and Ana. The Roma children live in a run-down, one-room apartment, owned by their mother Siminca, who is in prison for selling heroin.
They are supposed to be taken care of by their mother’s brothers – but all they do is come to the place to shoot heroin. Ana is also an addict, and gets arrested for the same crime as her mother.
After this happens, Andreea and Toto are taken in by an orphanage. They both start learning to read and write – Andreea in her 15th year of life – and Toto discovers a talent and a passion: dancing with a local hip-hop dance group.
Ana returns from jail at one point – she cannot be sentenced because of a lack of evidence – and promises never to touch drugs again. But this noble attempt very soon ends up the way it usually does with heroin addicts.
Link: https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/264373/
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