Romedia film nominated for Al-Jazeera's International Documentary Film Festival

The documentary film “Uprooted”, which was produced by the Romedia Foundation, has been nominated as an entry in Al-Jazeera’s 8th International Documentary Film Festival. The festival will take place from 19 to 22 April 2012 in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The film, by Romani director Katalin Bársony, will compete in the short film category with another 45 entries.

“Uprooted” conveys young Romani people’s perspectives on immigration in Europe, mainly between Kosovo and Germany. In October 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany had “utterly failed”. From the perspective of children such as Anita, Sedat and Nasmija, who were born and raised in Germany to parents who fled Kosovo in the 1990s, such declarations make no sense. For them, there is no such question: They are Germans.

The film premiered on 29 September 2011 during prime time on the RTK television channel in Kosovo. It was also broadcast by the US television station Link TV and British television viewers will soon see it on the Community Channel. The film was financed by the Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, Open Society Roma Initiatives and the National Endowment for Democracy.

A total of 94 documentaries have been nominated in the other two categories of medium-length and full-length films. The nominations were announced on 13 March by the director of the festival, Abbas Arnaout. You can watch a preview of the film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpGMsC8BOpQ