A film retracing the true origin of Romani people through the emblematic figure of the "Queen of the Gypsies" Esma Redzepova

We open on a woman's face, masked by a thick black veil. She sings the pain of a young girl promised to a man she doesn't love. Fingers appear, more expressive than a thousand faces. The veil is taken off. Like a mask behind a mask, fingers with huge rings now hide the face. Esma Redzepova eventually lowers her hands and reveals her face in tears.
At the beat of a drum the mood changes radically. The pace is faster and happier. The camera pulls out to reveal the singer surrounded by musicians. We are in a modern theatre in Western Europe. Part of the audience stands up and starts dancing.
Outside the hall, a large poster announces Esma as "Queen of the Gypsies ". And she is applauded like a queen and she breaks into the very popular Rom song "Dzelem Dzelem":
I went on long roads
I met happy Roms
The people who were dancing now go up to the stage and offer her huge bouquets of flowers.
Limelight is now extinguished, the last fan gone. Esma and her musicians load costumes and instruments into van that drives them into the night.
We join Esma in her hometown of Skopje, capital of Macedonia and reach the hill of the historic fort. Thanks to her prestige Esma was allowed to build her "Home of Humanity and Museum of Music" here. Due to lack of finances, works are not finished. Esma lives in the only finished part.
There, she opens her big book of souvenirs for us.
She grew up in the neighbourhood of Topana, close to her actual home, a place reserved for Roms. Her talent as a musician, dancer and actress brought her onto stage at an early age. At the age of 11 years she played a leading role in a school musical. Aged 14 she won a major new talent competition and was discovered by the famous musician, composer and bandleader Stevo Teodosievski. He promised father and daughter a great career, but explained that it would take discipline and hard work to get there.
It was the beginning of an almost fairy tale career. It led Esma to meet Tito and became an icon of the growing Yugoslavia. The ensemble with Stevo and Esma became one of the most popular and successful ensembles in the entire Balkan region. Seven years after they had met for the first time, they got married. Further tours followed, more than 400 recordings and several awards.
In the frame of the "non aligned countries" promoted by Tito, Esma went to India several times, met the Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi, and was officially crowned "Queen of the Gypsies".
When Stevo died in 1997, Esma was so devastated that she seriously considered ending her career.
The 47 orphans and street children they adopted with Stevo gave her the courage to resume singing.
Today they are gathered in front of her house.
We follow one of her sons through the swarming town of Sutka where 40'000 Roms live. They are preparing now for Erdelez, the most important Roms feast in Macedonia to celebrate the end of winter and the approach of their favourite season, summer.
They start by cleaning the house and painting it with various colours. They buy new clothes and lot of food for the celebration that will last several days.
Like any Roms family, Esma..s son gets a sheep, which is eaten piece by piece.
May 5 is the day of "Shutlo Pani". Though a majority of the Macedonian Roms are Muslims, they all go to orthodox churches to express their gratitude to God. They give offerings to the Saints following an anticlockwise movement. They go to a spring to collect water, which is supposed to have therapeutic values on that day. Some are bathing in a river. They pick up poplar branches to decorate their homes.
Juxtaposition with similar rituals in India: on the first day of the Durga Puja celebrations, a tree branch is carried to a river. The devotees bath with it, giving it sacred value.
The next day, the Macedonian Roms bathe their children to make them strong as poplars and healthy as flowers. Then they pay visits to the graveyards, later to parents and friends, with a lot of music and banquets.
On May 7, Esma gives a special open-air concert in Sutka. An overwhelming enthusiastic crowd welcomes her and together they sing the chorus of Dzelem Dzelem :
I went on long roads
I met happy Roms.
Esma follows with a verse that was added to the traditional song to make it the Roms "national anthem".
O Roms where do you come from?
With tents on happy roads?
I once had a great family,
The Black Legions murdered them
Come with me Roms from all the world
For the Romani roads have opened
Now is the time, rise up Roms now,
We will rise high if we act
As we hear the song, we see pictures showing the oppression of Roms during the Second World War, as well as today: concentration camps, the "wall of shame" in the Czech Republic".
On the last day of Erdelez, all Roms go out for a huge picnic to eat the last part of the sheep. They are joined by brass bands an the party goes in until the night falls.
Fade to black.
We open to follow a group of caravans which heads for the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, South of France, where thousands of Gypsies gather.
Marcel Courthiade, a Roms linguist explains that, though some have forgotten the original language and have different names, Kale Gypsies, Sinti or Manush, they all belong to the same ethnic family.
We follow a group of Roms to church in the centre of town. They go down to the crypt. They pay their respect to Saint Sarah, a Virgin with a black face like themselves. One after the other they passionately hug and kiss her, following an anticlockwise movement.
Esma joins them to pay her respect to the Saint, with gestures similar than on the "Shutlo Pani" day.
With her we cross the vast camp installed in the outskirts of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. She sits with a Manush. They exchange a few words but the conversation remains limited. But when he takes his guitar and starts playing in a style descending from Django Reinhardt, Esma begins to sing and the communication is immediate.
May 25 is the day of the large procession to the sea. The men transport on their shoulders the statue of the Saint now covered with luxurious coats. A dense crowd of devotees accompanies her through the streets until the sea where she is immersed. Some Roms continue to play guitar with their feet in the water; others dive into the Mediterranean Sea.
Back in India: a statue of the Goddess Kali, who has a black face like Sarah, is also transported to a river to be immersed.
Marcel Courthiade explains that it is now established that Roms come from India. But it is only very recently that he himself discovered the exact origin of their migration. Kannauj, now in the State of Uttar Pradesh, North East India, was a very prosperous and radiant city when it was attacked in 1018 by the ruthless Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. 53'000 people were captured and deported to Afghanistan to be sold as slaves. From there they started to move towards the Middle East and later to Europe, regrouping when they could.
Esma arrives at this place where the long story of Roms begins. She crosses the modern town of Kannauj and says she always felt at home in India. In the outskirts she discovers the remains of what was the capital of a vast empire. She hears A Cappella voices and joins a group of Indians to sing with them in harmony.
Finally she reaches the shore of Ganga to ritually collect the water of this sacred river.