Our School

OUR SCHOOL follows three Roma children - Alin, Beniamin, and Dana - as they struggle to break the barriers of segregation, candidly challenging entrenched stereotypes and trying to make the best of the cards dealt to them by adults along the way. The film begins in 2006, as the children are moved from a dead-end segregated school on the outskirts of Targu Lapus, Romania, into a mainstream school in the center of town, where they will learn together with Romanians. Once in the mainstream school, the children’s hopes and optimism are met with low expectations and further isolation.

Shot over four years, the documentary shows the lives of Roma children from close up, in unflinching yet intimate visual style characteristic of the new Romanian cinematography. The complex emotional structure of the film is propelled by vérité scenes, and the twists and turns of the story line are articulated in slow, tense reveals that are faithful to the rhythms of the small Transylvanian town.

A primary document on how policies and principles play out on the ground, this documentary illuminates the day-to-day workings of race relations anywhere in the world through the deceptively distant world of “Gypsies” and Transylvanian peasants. By telling a compelling human story that is part of a broader rights movement, OUR SCHOOL seeks to mobilize new energies at a moment that is ripe for change, when Europe finally has its Brown vs. Board of Education moment.