by Tea Vidovic Dalipi
Italia - Croazia, 2023
Stefilm International, Restart
Mirsad, an Ashkali, and Tea, a Croat, to general surprise and opposition from their families, after only six months in a relationship, decided to get married. Mirsad comes from an extremely traditional Ashkali (Roma) family from Kosovo and Tea stems from a modern, urban family from a small town near Zagreb. Two completely different cultures with their traditions and long built expectations of what a spouse should be like met on an uncharted territory. Although raised her entire life to make decisions independently, Tea still could not know how her parents would react to the fact that she is marrying an unemployed Roma drummer from Kosovo, and it was not easy for Mirsad to explain to his big family that he was marrying a girl who is neither Roma nor Muslim.
Will they be able to find a balance to have a happy life together overcoming enormous cultural differences?
This film is a very personal tale about me and my husband Mirsad, our daughter Frida and how our families reacted in the face of an unexpected marriage and a little girl they now claim to raise according to their own cultural models. I started shooting almost for fun. Then the idea of a film came to me to show how a marriage between different cultures is possible. Than the idea matured and what I was shooting became part of our relationship and engine of dialogue with our families. Filming situations as they occur allows me to have maximum intimacy and a direct approach to our emotional events. I will film all the intimate situations and conversations because this is the only way to represent ourselves as we really are, in a direct and honest way. This immediacy, without acting, is the backbone of the film: our daily lives, conflicts, dramas and decisions, disagreements and reconciliations will appear raw and real.
Paolo Favaro (Coordinamento Edizione); Milena Zulianello (Amministratore di Produzione).