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IN PURSUIT OF A BETTER LIFE

I JAKT PÅ ETT BÄTTRE LIV

By Caroline KERNEN, Tova KURKIALA MEDBO

STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - as FEST

Documentary - Completed 2015

- Year of production
- 2015
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- SWEDEN, ROMANIA
- Languages
- ROMANIAN, SWEDISH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Caroline KERNEN, Tova KURKIALA MEDBO
- Synopsis
- In the woods in Högdalen, a few miles outside of Stockholm city, there are two sheds, built from sticks and Styrofoam. There, lives the family Macau, two cousins: Denisa and Sara, 23 and 24 years old. Both are 160 centimeters tall and pregnant. When we see them on the street, begging with a mug, it's hard to tell them apart.
  
  In the film, we get to see them in their everyday life; on the streets of Stockholm and at home in the camp, where they live along with Denisa’s mother Liliana, whose wrinkles and toothless mouth tells a story of a completely different life than we are used to.
  
  We follow them through love and joy, sadness and longing for their children back home in Romania. And when we get to really know the people who the audience so often only meet as poor beggars - we can see that Sara and Denisa, seemingly so similar, rather are like night and day. Denisa had top grades in school, a promising talent who always knows best. Sara is a chain smoker. She dropped out of school when she was eight years old to beg for the family home in Romania. In the Romanian Roma community, built up on the outskirts of ours, there is a strong hierarchy. The more roma, the less worthy. The struggle for survival has shaped the people. We get to hear our subject’s dreams and prejudices, their ignorance, humor and intelligence, making them something they have not previously been for us: People.