Dallas Among Us

Colour, 35 mm
Hungary, Germany, Austria, Romania, 2005, 93 min
Section: East of the West - competitive
Oficiální stránky: www.dallasfilm.hu

Synopsis

Teacher Radu Dima returns to his native village of Dallas to attend his father’s funeral and is shocked by what he sees. The Romany community he grew up in, and from which he managed to extricate himself, lives in conditions unfit even for animals, in indescribable poverty and filth, among mounds of rubbish. Adults and children scrape together a living by collecting paper, glass and metal from the dump and selling them for a few coins. There is no water, eletricity or sewage system in the village; a life with no future has rid the people of all hope and any desire for change. The only ones with any rights are the stronger among them. Dima had planned to leave straight after the funeral, but meeting the people he has known since childhood pulls him back into the past and forces him to attempt to do something about their plight. 

About the director

Adrian Robert Pejo (b. 1964, Arad) hails from Romania, from where his family emigrated to Austria in 1972. He has been making short films since he was 13, screened at various international amateur film festivals. His short Crescendo won the Main Prize from the Association of Austrian Amateur Films (VÖFA). After studying theatre and film science at university in Vienna, he debuted in 1992 with the feature Lipstick (Rúzs). Other works include the documentaries The Road to Eden (Der Weg nach Eden, 1995), awarded Best Documentary at Montreal’s Festival de Nouveau Cinema, and Rest in Pieces (1997) with Joe Coleman and Jim Jarmusch. He has also worked for TV. The film Dallas Among Us was screened in the Panorama section at this year’s Berlin IFF and at other festivals including the Hungarian Film Week, where Dorka Gryllus won Best Actress. The director has lived in New York since 1996.