Korkoro
Korkoro is a 2009 French drama film written and directed by Tony Gatlif, starring Francophone actors Marc Lavoine, Marie-Josée Croze and James Thiérrée. The film's cast were of many nationalities such as Albanian, Kosovar, Georgian, Serbian, French, Norwegian, and nine Romani people Gatlif recruited in Transylvania.
Based on an anecdote about the Second World War by the Romani historian Jacques Sigot, the film was inspired by a Romani who escaped the Nazis with help from French villagers. It depicts the rarely documented subject of Porajmos.
Other than a band of Romani people, the film has a character based on Yvette Lundy, a French teacher who was active in the French resistance and deported to a concentration camp for forging passports for Romani.
Gatlif had intended to make a documentary but the lack of supporting documents led him to present it as a drama.
The film premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival, winning the Grand Prize of the Americas, amongst other awards. It was released in France as Liberté in February 2010, where it grossed $601,252; revenues from Belgium and the United States brought the total to $627,088. The film's music, composed by Tony Gatlif and Delphine Mantoulet, received a nomination in the Best Music Written for a Film category at the 36th annual César Awards.
Korkoro has been described as a "rare cinematic tribute" to those killed in the Porajmos. In general, it received positive reviews from critics, including praise for having an unusually leisurely pace for a Holocaust film. Critics regarded it as one of the director's best works, and with Latcho Drom, the "most accessible" of his films. The film is considered to show Romani in a non-stereotypical way, far from their clichéd depictions as musicians.
Plot
The film is set during World War II in rural Vichy France, and begins with a nine-year-old French boy, Claude escaping from an orphanage. He decides to avoid state protection. He meets a Romani caravan, an extended family of 20 men, women and children, who decide to adopt him. The Romani start calling Claude, Korkoro, the free one. Fascinated by their nomadic lifestyle, Claude decides to stay with them.The caravan sets up camp outside a small wine-growing village, hoping to find seasonal work in the vineyards and a place to sell their wares. The village, as was the trend, is divided into two factions—one welcomes the Romani, and the other sees them as an intrusion. Théodore Rosier, the village mayor and veterinarian, and Mademoiselle Lundi, a school teacher and clerk in city hall, are two of the friendlier villagers. The Vichy France gendarmerie used the documentation made in the passports of its citizens to monitor their movements for which a threshold was set, along with imprisonment for violations. This adversely affected the Romani. Lundi uses her powers as a clerk and forges their passports, removing the documentation about their movements.
Later, when Rosier has an accident outside the village, he is rescued by the Romani, who treat the mayor with their traditional healing practices. He sells them his father's house in order to protect them from the Fascist policy of imprisoning the homeless. Lundi enrolls the children in her school. The freedom-loving Romani recognize that these French are trying to help but struggle with life in a fixed place and the rules of formal education.
When the Nazis arrive, Rosier and Lundi are revealed to be members of the French Resistance; they are arrested and tortured during interrogation. The Nazis round up the Romani and send them to concentration camps. Claude, cared for by Rosier, chooses to go with the Romani.
Production
Background
During World War II, the Porajmos was the attempt by Nazi Germany, the Independent State of Croatia, Horthy's Hungary and their allies to exterminate the Romani people of Europe. Under Hitler’s rule, both Romani and Jews were defined as "enemies of the race-based state" by the Nuremberg Laws; the two groups were targeted by similar policies and persecution, culminating in the near annihilation of both populations in Nazi-occupied countries. Estimates of the death toll of Romani people in World War II range from 220,000 to 1,500,000.Because Eastern European Romani communities were less organised than Jewish communities, Porajmos was not well documented. There also existed a trend to downplay the actual figures, according to Ian Hancock, director of the Program of Romani Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Tony Gatlif, whose films mostly have Romani people as subjects, had long wanted to make a documentary on this less well-known subject, but the lack of enough documented evidence coupled with the absence of accurate pre-war census figures for the Romani made it difficult.
Development
Gatlif's quest began in 1970 when he approached Matéo Maximoff, a French writer of Romani ethnicity. The two went to Montreuil to interview the Romani who were initially not very forthcoming discussing the subject of Porajmos. Gatlif was also researching the Justes, the French who attempted to shield the Romani from persecution. Following former French President Jacques Chirac's efforts to honour the Justes, Gatlif came across Yvette Lundy, a former schoolteacher in Gionges, La Marne, who had been deported for forging documents for the Romani. Gatlif also got hold of an anecdote by Jacques Sigot, a historian who has documented the Porajmos, which would later help with the story. The anecdote is about a Romani family saved from being sent to the camp at Montreuil-Bellay by a French lawyer who sold them his home for a single franc. Unable to adjust to a stationary lifestyle, the family took to the streets, which led to their arrest in northern France and eventual incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp.The characters in Korkoro are drawn from Sigot's anecdote. The film traces the Romani familia
Intended to be a documentary, Korkoro became a drama because of the lack of sufficient supporting documents. Gatlif wrote the initial script in one month; further modifications later followed which made the film's style a narrative by the characters Rosier and Lundi. Gatlif used Lundy's help to write the scenes related to her, to which he added his own experiences with his teacher. The first appearance of the Romani in the film is inspired by the way the nomadic Romani showed up in the middle of nowhere after Gatlif had been working on the characterisation for over a year. Another year was spent in developing Taloche's character.
Casting
Gatlif wanted to represent the entire Romani community in Félix Lavil dit Taloche's naiveté and purity. As an example, Taloche is shown as being afraid of ghosts, echoing the Romani phobia. For Taloche's role, Gatlif needed a musician with acrobatic skills; this proved very hard to find. In Paris at the Théâtre de la Ville, he was impressed by James Thiérrée, a grandson of Charlie Chaplin. A non-Romani, Thiérrée learned Romanes and Romani swing music in six months.For Théodore Rosier, Gatlif wanted someone to emulate a typical Frenchman of the time, with a "voice and face a little like that of Pierre Fresnay, Maurice Ronet, Jacques Charrier or Gérard Philippe", which he found in Marc Lavoine. Marie-Josée Croze was the obvious choice for Mademoiselle Lise Lundi. Gatlif had envisioned Lundi as a "Hitchcock character: fragile, mysterious and strong".
Pierre Pentecôte, the militia character played by Carlo Brandt, was presented with a pitiful look, rather than with a villainous caricature. His drooping hat and a few extra pounds symbolise the fat militia of the period. The orphan, P'tite Claude, was played by Mathias Laliberté. Rufus was chosen by Gatlif for the role of Fernand because of his typical French looks. Puri Dai, the grandmother, was played by Raya Bielenberg, a Soviet-born Norwegian artist and 2005 recipient of Oslo City art award who uses music and dance to make the Romani culture better known in Norway. The other notable characters in the movie, Darko, Kako, Chavo, Zanko and Tatane were played by Arben Bajraktaraj, Georges Babluani, Ilijir Selimoski, Kevyn Diana and Thomas Baumgartner respectively. Levis, a minor character was played by then 11-year-old great-grandson of Django Reinhardt, a virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer of Manouche Romani ethnicity. The cast included people of many nationalities, Albanian, Kosovar, Georgian, Serbian, French and Norwegian along with the nine Romani people Gatlif found living in extreme poverty in Transylvania. Arrangements were made for these Romani to stay in France for the three to four months it took to shoot the film.
Filming
The film was shot in Loire, in the Forez mountains, Rozier-Côtes-d'Aurec and Saint-Bonnet-le-Château. The tools used in the movie, which were very similar to the ones employed in 1943, came from Transylvania. The barbed wire fences of the concentration camps are genuine ones built by the Nazis in Romania which can be differentiated from the ones used for cattle by their denser spacing.The male actors were asked to grow their hair and moustaches. The actors also had to diet to lose weight to achieve the look of World War II characters. The costumes had a faded look, a reflection that people of the period owned few clothes, often only two outfits. None of the actors knew the script in advance and were only informed each night before of what they were to do in their daily scenes. The Romani were not aware of the historic events that were the basis of the movie, and were only told that the story was set in hard times comparable to Ceaușescu's tenure in Romania. In the scene where the Romani revolt against the police over the death of Taloche, they were made aware of the character's death only when the scene was being shot, leading to a genuine outpouring of emotions, making their fight with the police appear more real. Gatlif later remarked in an interview that this scene stands for the actual revolt by the Romani in Auschwitz on May 16, 1944.
Thierrée was the only actor allowed to improvise. His characterisation of Taloche was built on spontaneity, and in many instances, Gatlif had no clue how he would act in a scene, such as in the tap scene in which he plunges into a stairwell. In another scene, in which he dances with war music in the background, Thierrée pretended to make love to the earth like an animal. Gatlif, who had wanted the character to have the ability to sense forthcoming danger, like animals often do, stated that Thierrée was suitable for the role because he is very much an animal. The dance scene where Taloche is shown falling from a tree was done without stunt doubles.