Romanian actress Alina Șerban (Housekeeping for Beginners, Alone at My Wedding, Gipsy Queen) is inviting us on a cinematic journey into the experience of being a Roma woman.I Matter (Eu Contez), which she wrote and directed, is her feature directorial debut, and it will get its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 8.The movie, featured in the Venice Spotlight section of the fest, looks to break new ground. After all, it is described as “the first film by a Roma woman to be selected for an A-list festival,” and it brings, as the press notes highlight, “an intimate and empowering first-person perspective to the screen” as a young woman “struggles to keep [two] worlds from colliding.”Șerban draws on her own experience to explore identity and belonging from a Roma woman’s perspective.
“Through Rebeca’s eyes, I want to invite the audience into this world and to understand what it is like to live as a minority in a society where being ‘normal’ so often means being white and growing up in a family,” she shares in a director’s note. “As a Roma woman, I have faced many difficulties that have shaped the way I see the world, including poverty, discrimination and even eviction from my childhood home. Growing up, I was made to feel ashamed of being Roma. It took me years to let go of that shame and embrace my culture. But it took me even longer to speak freely about what spending part of my youth in a children’s home meant to me.”
