2021

'How I Became a Partisan' is searching for personal identity and Romany identity through history of World War II.

Romany director Vera Lacková uncover fates of five Roma partisans in the former Czechoslovakia on her own family background. Through interviews with descendants, those who remember, or with help of documents from archives Vera demolish the long-held stereotype of Roma as mere victims of Nazism. She wants to show Roma whose deeds go beyond the history of a minority ethnic group and deservedly form part of European history. During her search she comes up against deep-rooted prejudice, indifference and hatred towards the Roma community, both in the memories of those she interviews and during her search in the present. In a symbolic way Vera will try to rectify the historic injustice towards her ethnic group and her family by erection of a monument in a place where family of her great-grandfather was executed.

'How I Became a Partisan' has been selected for the Ex Oriente Film 2019. EOF is a training programme focused on development  and funding of creative documentary film from Central and Eastern Europe.

 The film was made with the financial support of the Slovak audiovisual fund, Erste Foundation Roma Partnership, Fund for the support of the culture of national minorities and Czech film fund.

© Media Voice, Film & Sociology, RTVS, Czech television