The Village of Roses

Every morning, a school bus passes Denise and her cousins Jonathan and Walter, without picking them up. An urgent and extremely timely close depiction of a Roma family’s everyday life and vulnerability in Italy, where the winds of fascism are blowing again. In a suburb in southern Milan is Villagio delle Rose, the Village of the Roses, a legal Roma camp where a few hundred people live in caravans and wooden houses. Inside the gates, life goes on quietly – but outside, a storm is blowing. The camp is continuously used as a political weapon in politics where populist parties vilify and threaten its existence. For almost six years, Hanna Heilborn has followed one of the families in the village and the closeness gives her a unique insight into Roma everyday life far beyond stereotypes. Elegantly interwoven with archive clippings, news footage, and activist Dijana Pavlovic’s political struggle for the camp’s residents, the everyday depiction is contrasted with vulnerability – and the right to a decent life.