{"id":607558,"date":"2026-09-06T10:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T10:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/607558\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T10:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T10:16:11","slug":"roma-director-alina-serban-on-historic-venice-bound-i-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/607558\/","title":{"rendered":"Roma Director Alina \u0218erban on Historic, Venice-Bound ‘I Matter’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRoma filmmaker Alina \u0218erban broke barriers long before she set foot on the red carpet this week at the Venice Film Festival<\/a>, where her feature-length directorial debut, \u201cI Matter,\u201d world premieres in the Venice Spotlight section.<\/p>\n

\n\tRising from an impoverished background to become a celebrated stage star in Romania, the actress and directing debutante has defied all odds to reach the starry heights of the Lido. Billed as the first feature from a female Roma director to screen at an A-list festival, \u201cI Matter\u201d marks the latest chapter in her life-long quest to reframe the narrative around her marginalized community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u0218erban, however, is taking it all in stride.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m nervous about the pressure of being \u2018the first\u2019 \u2014 all the firsts,\u201d she tells\u00a0Variety.\u00a0\u201cBut I also have this immense relief, and the feeling of being grateful that I managed to pull through something almost impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInspired by \u0218erban\u2019s own life, \u201cI Matter\u201d tells the story of\u00a0a young Roma woman studying to be an actor. She\u2019s faced with the threat of being kicked out of her orphanage and must suddenly embrace her identity and confront the reality of making it through life on her own. Based on the 2021 short of the same name, whose festival run included New Directors\/New Films, it\u2019s\u00a0produced by microFILM, 2Pilots Filmproduction, Frakas Prods. and Lemming Film, with international sales handled by Pluto Film.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor\u00a0\u0218erban, the premiere is a capstone in what has already been a remarkable career. Raised in poverty in Bucharest, she was placed in a state-run orphanage at an early age before becoming the first member of her family to graduate from high school. After attending Bucharest\u2019s Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography, she was accepted into\u00a0NYU\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts, then later earned a master\u2019s degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen she returned to Romania, she mounted an acclaimed one-woman show about her life, focusing not only on the rampant discrimination she faced, but on her triumphs and joys. By her 30th birthday,\u00a0\u0218erban\u00a0had written and staged pioneering plays that championed a radical, feminist, Roma perspective\u00a0\u2014 trying, she says, \u201cto show the humanity of these people. Not to portray them as victims nor villains. Not to self-exoticize. But also to celebrate ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI Matter\u201d stars newcomer\u00a0Denisa Farca\u0219, bringing both vulnerability and determination to a lead role\u00a0that she invests with her own life experience, according to the director. \u0218erban describes working with\u00a0Farca\u0219\u00a0and her co-stars as a \u201ccollaborative process,\u201d one in which the group delved deep into \u201cwhat it means to be accepted\u201d as Roma women while giving the young actors space to \u201cexpress themselves \u2014 to feel that they also own the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis isn\u2019t \u0218erban\u2019s first visit to the Venice Film Festival; she attended in 2023 with the cast and crew of Goran Stolevski\u2019s \u201cHousekeeping for Beginners,\u201d in which she had a supporting role. But this year\u2019s experience will be something else entirely for the director. Nearly two dozen of the cast members of \u201cI Matter\u201d will be in attendance \u2014 including the 16 child performers who populated the film\u2019s orphanage \u2014 while Roma band Mahala Rai Banda will serenade the red-carpet arrivals.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is such a historical moment for me, and also for the Roma community,\u201d \u0218erban says. \u201cIt\u2019s a moment of celebration. And I want to look back and say I did everything in my power for the people in the team to [share this] moment. And also to put into the world a message of dignity, of celebration, of pain that needs to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roma filmmaker Alina \u0218erban broke barriers long before she set foot on the red carpet this week at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[275039,146,85,46,2623],"class_list":["post-607558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alina-serban","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}