Class in Session: Mona Nicoara’s Our School Makes Tribeca Cut

Among the dozen documentaries in competition this year at the Tribeca Film Festival’s World Documentary Feature section, we find Mona Nicoara and Miruna Coca-Cozma’s Our School (Școala noastră), a bitter-sweet story about hope and race, and an elegy about generational prejudice and squandered opportunities.

The 94-minute long doc was shot over the course of four years and it follows three Roma (often called Gypsy) children – Alin, Beniamin and Dana – as they struggle to break the barriers of segregation, candidly challenging entrenched stereotypes and trying to make the best of the cards dealt to them by adults along the way. The film begins in 2006, as the children are moved from a dead-end segregated school on the outskirts of Târgu Lăpuș, Romania, into a mainstream school in the center of town, where they will learn together with Romanians. Once in the mainstream school, the children’s hopes and optimism are met with low expectations and further isolation.

Mona Nicoară’s commenced her film career as an associate producer of Children Underground, a documentary – directed by Edet Belzberg – which received the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was nominated for Oscar back in 2002. This marks Nicoară’s and Miruna Coca-Cozma’s debuts as directors. I had the opportunity to speak to the Mona Nicoară who is currently traveling the film festival circuit.

Marin Apostol: In a few words, tell me about your work as a human rights activist.
Mona Nicoară: Right after the 1989 Revolution which overthrew the Ceausescu regime in my home country, Romania, I started out working with some of the newly-formed human rights groups. It was a tremendously exciting, energy-filled time. I soon found a home working on LGBT and Roma rights with the Romanian Helsinki Committee until 1995, when I moved to New York to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University. Over the years, I continued to come back to Eastern Europe to do field work every chance I got, and eventually moved to Budapest, Hungary, where I became deeply immersed in advocacy for school desegregation, working for the European Roma Rights Center and the Open Society Institute. The idea for OUR SCHOOL came out of that work – out of the need to understand more deeply not just principled positions, but also the day-to-day realities on the ground, the very content and human, emotional meaning of human rights advocacy work.

Apostol: When will Our School be officially released? Will we be able to see it in cinemas in Romania or in the U.S?
Nicoară: We have just started on the festival circuit, targeting first countries like the Czech Republic and Greece, where Roma families have successfully challenged school segregation before Europe’s highest human rights court in Strasbourg. We will have our North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in April, and are planning to screen publicly in Romania in June. We are planning to bring to cinemas, as well as to small communities that may not have access to a cinema, but that could use the film as a tool for starting a public conversation about race relations and Roma integration.

Apostol: What kind of financial support did you find for the doc?
Nicoară: We received early support from funders deeply committed to the issue: the Roma Education Fund, the Open Society Institute, and UNICEF. We also received financial and – most importantly – creative support from the Sundance Documentary Fund and Chicken and Egg Pictures in the US, where the project was included in the 2009 Sundance Documentary Edit Lab, the 2010 IFP Lab, and the 2010 Chicken and Egg mentorship slate. Because this is a Swiss co-production, we received City of Geneva and Regio funds at various stages of production. Several European broadcasters came on board after the project was presented in pitching forums in Jihlava, Toronto, and Thessaloniki, and we are currently working on further distribution deals to secure the remainder of the financing.

Apostol: Lastly, what can you tell me about Miruna Coca-Cozma, who is also co-director of Our School.
Nicoară: Miruna is a childhood friend (we went to high school together in Romania) who shares a passion for documentaries and social issue films. Because of her experience, her commitment, and – last, but definitely not least – our deep trust, she was a natural choice as partner for this delicate, long-term project. She is a graduate of the Romanian Theatre and Film Academy andthe BBC School of Journalism. She has worked as a journalist for Antena 1 and TVR in Romania, for TSR in Switzeland, and France 5.

Our School has its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next month.