Acasă, My Home follows the trials and tribulations of a Roma family living off the grid in the wilderness

ACASĂ, MY HOME (Radu Ciorniciuc, 2020)
Opened virtually and in theaters January 15
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“Anywhere you are is home,” Elvis Presley sang in the 1962 movie Kid Galahad. Where one puts down roots is at the heart of Acasă, My Home, debut filmmaker Radu Ciorniciuc’s gripping documentary about the Enaches, a Roma family living in squalor away from society in the wilderness of Văcărești Nature Park in the Bucharest Delta. For nearly twenty years, the patriarch, Gică Enache, and his wife, Niculina Nedelcu, existed off the grid, raising nine children whom they hid from social services and did not send to school; the family subsisted on fish from a lake, hunted birds and small animals, and used books for kindling. Ciorniciuc, an investigative journalist who cofounded the independent media organization Casa Jurnalistului, was doing a story on the park when he came upon the Enache clan, led by Gică, who in 2012 had temporarily emerged when he became a local hero for saving some children from a burning house. When the government decides to turn the swampland into a public park, Gică, Niculina, Vali, Rică, Corina, Duca, Georgiana, Gigel, Luci, Marcel, Nicușor, and Zâna might have to rejoin civilization, a prospect the parents are ready to fight against. “I’ll set myself on fire. I’m not afraid to die,” Gică says.

Acasă, My Home is an intimate film told in cinéma verité style; written by journalist Lina Vdovîi and shot by director of photography Mircea Topoleanu, the film follows the Enaches as they go about their daily life. They are well aware they are being filmed, but they never speak directly to the camera, and Ciorniciuc does not interview anyone about their situation. The narrative develops in such a way that if you didn’t know better, you might think it is a fiction film. Ciorniciuc, who served as cowriter, co-cinematographer, and producer (with Monica Lãzurean-Gorgan), also gave cameras to the children for them to photograph themselves as they go fishing, play with pigeons, chickens, dogs, cats, and pigs, and head into the big town, which is just across a road, an ever-present threat to their not-quite-Walden-like existence. He merely keeps the camera rolling as Gică rages on, the media arrive to cover an inspection by Prince Charles and Prime Minister Dacian Cioloș, one of the sons gets himself into a personal dilemma, and Niculina tries to avoid the spotlight. There’s an implicit discrimination inherent in the treatment of the family; no one cared about them when they lived in filthy, abject poverty, but now that the government wants the parkland, they are on everyone’s mind.

About ten minutes into the film, a spectacular drone shot begins with a few of the boys kicking around a ball by one of their two shacks and rises dramatically hundreds of feet into the air, wind blowing ominously, until the Enaches’ tiny patch of dirt amid the vast green landscape is barely visible, then turns to reveal the large white and gray city next door, where a very different life awaits. But Ciorniciuc, who in addition to the film has created a book and a continuing social project about the Enaches, refuses to celebrate this marginalized group of people as heroic figures; he depicts them as they are, warts and all, perhaps victims of circumstance but also complicit in the decisions that set them apart from the rest of the world.