Project Detail

The Deathless Woman

Synopsis

This is a ghost story. A series of uncanny events lead The Seeker to a forest in Poland where she meets a distraught elderly woman who hands her a note written in Polish that she cannot understand. Returning months later with an interpreter she hears the story of The Deathless Woman, a Roma matriarch who was buried alive in the forest by German soldiers in 1942.
The Deathless Woman draws us from the scene of her death to other sites of Roma persecution. She hovers above the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau on the night the Roma revolt against their Nazi captors. She glides under the lake in Várpalota where 118 women and children were massacred in 1945. She passes through the burnt-out house in Tatárszentgyörgy where neo-Nazis murdered a Roma family in 2009. She even crosses into the virtual realm and enters the digital landscapes of the Internet, encountering hate speech and video games where players are invited to gun down unarmed Roma as they run through the streets.
The film interweaves The Deathless Woman’s ghostly narration, The Seeker’s journey of discovery, fantastical re-imaginings of buried secrets; and documentary testimony from witnesses to atrocities against the Roma in Poland and Hungary.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Details

Year
2019
Type of film
Features
Running time
89 mins
Format
HD
Director
Roz Mortimer 1st Feature
Producer
Roz Mortimer
Editor
Daniel Goddard
Screenwriter
Roz Mortimer
Director of Photography
Peter Emery
Production Designer
Roz Mortimer
Sound
Chu-Li Shewring, Stefan Smith
Principal cast
Loren O'Dair, Iveta Kokyová, Oliver Malik

Production Status

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