In both fiction and documentary, British moviegoers are largely presented with the same story about migrating to Britain: the arduous journey; the difficulty of fitting in; tales of suffering and overcoming hardships. Even a film like the highly acclaimed Flee from last year, which is ultimately optimistic, spends considerable time depicting the traumatic experience of migration.
Leaving to Remain offers a different approach by letting its three subjects, Roma people who moved to Britain for a better life, tell the story of where they are now, showcasing their present rather than trawling over their past. Interestingly, such an approach came from necessity due to the COVID pandemic requiring them to film themselves or recruit family members to do so.
We begin with Ondrej who is initially working as a special needs teaching assistant before the pandemic requires him to take up a new job while also studying psychology at university. In contrast, we also follow Denisa and Petr in established professional roles as a lawyer and police officer respectively. Denisa was the first Roma to qualify as a lawyer in the UK and subsequently is appropriately introduced to us by attending an event for the Roma Role Model Project. Petr is similarly respected having received an honorary MBE for his services and volunteering as an honorary consulate with ambitions to be in the House of Lords.
Rather than rely on an authorial voiceover or talking heads to provide background and historical information, director Mira Erdevički has edited these individual stories together as a collage of Roma life in Britain.
While Petr had worked for eleven years dealing with human trafficking and modern slavery, that is the closest the film gets to addressing the upsetting realities for refugees that are often focused upon by mainstream media. Instead, the documentary focuses on the domestic everyday concerns of Roma migrants, putting their lives as people before the issues that surround them. COVID and Brexit are the contexts for their day-to-day routines rather than just talking points. We are shown the difficulties of employment when lockdowns began, the stress surrounding EU settlement scheme applications, and the speeding up of wedding plans as a consequence of Brexit.
For all that we are sadly familiar with the British discrimination towards Roma people, the “gypsy” slur is not unique to us and it is clear that it is much more structurally ingrained in countries like Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Ondrej’s visit to his family in Slovakia shows how literally one side of a road has native-born people returning from the UK to build new houses and on the other is the “ghetto” of old run-down homes, including shipping containers. Denisa is the only one in her family to have a mainstream education, mostly because Roma children are segregated into special needs schools; as she bluntly summarises, “If you’re Roma in the Czech Republic, you’re not wanted.”
I won’t break down everything that happens in the documentary, partly because I think it is worth watching and hearing their stories yourself, but also because honestly there isn’t much to discuss. I don’t mean that the film is disposable or lightweight, but this is a documentary about showing rather than telling. Rather than rely on an authorial voiceover or talking heads to provide background and historical information, director Mira Erdevički has edited these individual stories together as a collage of Roma life in Britain. We are brought into their family homes, put in the middle of conversations and share their concerns about ill family members. The press notes describe the film as “quietly radical” and it is hard to disagree with it.
We even get a glimpse into the future with children asked what they want to be when they’re older and give answers as diverse as a lawyer and a painter. A Slovakian teenager casually states, “Only old people are in Slovakia” and a school meeting with the Slovakian secretary of Education reveals how Slovakian children thrive more in British education than in Slovakia. This documentary opens up the narrative around migrants by not focusing on where they’ve come from or hand-wringing about whether they will fit in. They live a life here that is as worthy of documentation as any other life. The ordinariness makes it stand out and hopefully usher in a necessary change of perspective around Roma migrants.
Leaving to Remain is playing at Selected Cinemas Nationwide
