The 10-minute documentary “Roma” by British filmmaker Sam Davis (2014) attempts to show the life of Rroma in Albania. Unfortunately, the movie does not create a differentiated picture of the minority, but reproduces numerous stereotypes: the Rroma marry at the age of thirteen or fifteen, claims an American missionary, and live in unbearable hygienic conditions, almost like animals. A local politician makes the statement that one can only integrate Rroma successfully if one takes into account their travelling lifestyle and gives them space to act out their traditions. This is complemented with recordings from a Rroma ghetto in Tirana. All this leads to a highly one-sided, distorted notion of the Rroma lifestyle. In reality, many members of the minority are integrated and not in slums. Many marry only as adults, not earlier than members of other ethnic groups. In addition, most Rroma are precisely not travellers, as the Albanian politician falsely claims. Poverty is not a cultural characteristic of the Rroma. Unfortunately, the highly aesthetic images cannot make up for these massive shortcomings in content. The Rroma are still heavily discriminated against, this fact is emphatically shown by the documentation. However, the portrayed life circumstances match by no means those of all Rroma in Europe or even in Albania, as Jake Flanagin (2014) of the New York Times incorrectly interprets: “Despite a millennium of shared history with Europeans, Roma remain one of the Continent’s most marginalised and underserved groups. A 2012 report jointly compiled by the United Nations Development Program and the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency found that only 15 percent of Roma adults surveyed “have completed upper-secondary general education, versus more than 70 percent of the majority population living nearby.” Similarly, less than 30 percent of Roma surveyed were employed in an official capacity at the time of questioning, and roughly 45 percent “live in households lacking at least one of the following: an indoor kitchen, toilet, shower or bath, or electricity.” What Flanagin does not mention is that the cited study only surveyed Rroma who live in neighbourhoods with a over proportioned amount of Rroma, which were usually already marginalised. Rroma living really integrated were almost not considered for the study (compare European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2013). However, in reality, Rroma belong to all strata of society and not just the lower class.

• Davis, Sam (2014) Roma. In: Vimeo online vom 17.9.2014. http://vimeo.com/103664163
• European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) (2013) Roma Pilot Survey – Technical report: methodology, sampling and fieldwork. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-roma-pilot-survey-technical-report_en.pdf
• Flanagin, Jake (2014) his Is Life Among the Roma, Europe’s Forgotten People. In: The New York Times online vom 8.9.2014. http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/this-is-life-among-the-roma-europes-forgotten-people/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

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