Étrangers de l'intérieur
Juliette Jourdan
2008 - 52 min - Beta digital - Couleur - France

In a small city in the northern Czech Republic, the mayor had a wall put up to isolate the Gypsy houses from the rest of the population. The Gypsies were outraged. Backed by sympathizers who had come from all over the country, they took down the wall. The country was divided and Maticni Street made it into the international press. The film maps out the symbolic wall that isolates them from all of Europe and lets the Gypsies speak. We meet the people in this rebellion, we follow teenagers in Prague, we listen to a grandmother wounded by the war, a boxer, some skinheads, a Gypsy intellectual. The film captures what defines the Gypsy people and which has allowed them for centuries to preserve their identity and force intact, despite persecution and exclusion.