A slum in a Romani neighbourhood. Ten-year-old Valentina invites us to meet her family. What follows are bizarre anecdotes, daydreams and documentary observations – a film as lively as its roaming heroine. “Do you want me to tell a story?“, Valentina asks. She is wearing army pants and a track-suit top. Her hair is wild with a tiny clip. She entrusts us with why she wasn’t born a boy, as it should have been. Nevertheless Valentina knows every detail of her family history: how her father won her mother’s heart with a bottle of juice and a pack of cigarettes, why her sister was held at gunpoint by her parents in-law, where her siblings were brought after they were caught begging. Together with her family of twelve Valentina lives in a run down one-room shack in the Romani municipality Šutka, in Skopje, Macedonia. Observations of daily live are mixed with Valentina’s personal stories, dreams with actual facts. Yet it becomes clear, that all of her story telling is nothing but preparation for her big dream.

biografia

Maximilian Feldmann was born in Berlin in 1985. He shot his first documentary portrait in 2005 during his Voluntary Social Year in Ecuador. This was followed by several traineeships at film and TV productions. Between 2007 and 2015, he studied Documentary Filmmaking at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Since graduating in 2015 he works as a director and author for both fictional and non-fictional productions. Valentina is his graduation project.

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