Lina Vdovîi & Radu Ciorniciuc: Tata

The success is understandable for this well-funded super-professional production by Romanian company Manifest – producer Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan – with many co-producers, shot over a long period, with four editors on board, with a complicated structure as it takes place in three countries and has many layers, with the directing couple as the main characters, at least Lina is, Radu is behind the camera and with a Tata – father – as the strong – and weak man, who has been an abuser to Lina and her mother, and who himself is an abused migrant in Italy asking his daughter to help him. Wow and yes it has had an audience, understandable with domestic violence, well violence in all its grim facets, not only in the Eastern part of Europe, where it takes place.

Here you have some more info, copy-pasted from the website of the Autlook website, they take care of the film:

“After years of estrangement, Lina, a Moldovan journalist, receives a video message from her father, a migrant worker in Italy, showing bruises on his arms. Equipping him with a hidden camera so that he may find justice, Lina finds herself on a parallel journey — uncovering a pattern of domestic violence that has plagued her family for generations.

Filmed across Italy, Moldova, and Romania, TATA is a raw portrait of a family locked in a relentless struggle against toxic masculinity. It tells the story of a daughter’s emotionally poignant quest to break the cycle for herself, the next generation, and even for the one who hurt her.”

There is a wonderful ending of the film, where the child of the directing couple asks Lina “why are you upset”… Watch the film to get the answer!

Romania, Germany, The Netherlands, 84 mins., 2024