Kali Traș / Black Fear

"Kali Traș" is not just another story. "Kali Traș" is perhaps the most important and most painful story the Roma have. Kali Traș (Romani for Black Fear) is one of the names the Roma gave to the plan of ethnic extermination launched by the fascist regime during the Second World War. Together with a travelling Roma theatre company we go back to the last century and witness a fragment of the Roma Holocaust. Our starting point is the book "Cu moartea-n ochi" by the survivor Valerică Stănescu, and we learn how life changes for Diloda, Șopârla, Leanca and Franț - actors, puppeteers, a fortune teller, musicians - when they are deported to Transnistria, to the camps on the Bug. Subjected to inhuman conditions, fighting cold, hunger and cholera, they dream of coming home. Will they manage to return to Romania together? And if not, who will keep the memory of what they suffered, in the hope that history will not repeat itself? How will they return to their cheerful fairground theatre after the grim spectacle of the Roma genocide? The Giuvlipen theatre company, called "the avant-garde of the Roma revolution" by Reuters, takes on contemporary social themes, controversial and provocative ones. In recent years Giuvlipen has launched an innovative Roma cultural movement in Romania, presenting Roma theatre as contemporary, experimental and progressive. Giuvlipen's productions use comic means to speak about serious subjects such as structural racism and gender inequality. The production is part of the project "Roma theatre is not nomadic: The Memory of Transnistria", made with the support of the AFCN.