The Romanians are coming is a documentary that presents the story of some Romanians in UK. Channel 4 got a Romanian to narrate the documentary, Alex, who presents himself as a gypsy. Their lifes aren’t pretty, they’re extremely poor, by west standards, and they came to work – that’s the story line, in one phrase.
For me, one of the presented cases stands out. Ștefan, came to work to make money to fix his little daughter’s leg, which was broken and then messed up in reconstruction surgery. As bad as he had it in Romania, he seems to have it even worse in UK. His English sucks and this lessens a lot the job availability. He tries his luck as one of the living statues in London. It doesn’t pay off, but in the meantime he finds out about a free English class, he then joins. After a few months of living of 7 pounds a day from the living statue “job” (he kinda suck at it) he gets some benefits from the UK government, out of which he sends most back home in Romania. As soon as his English is good enough he goes again to the job agency and they hire him as a street cleaner on the same streets he’s living. He’s a happy father, he’s one step closer to end his little daughter’s leg pain.
Ștefan is not the smartest person, nor the prettiest, nor the luckiest. Neither are the other Romanians presented during the documentary. It is unclear for me if he’s Romanian-Romanian or Gypsy-Romanian. But does it really matter? For me, he’s just a father willing to do what it takes to support his family.
Apparently, for some it matters. A group of Romanian students protested in front of Channel 4 because they felt ashamed to be associated with these people. They do not deny anything that’s happening in the documentary. Miruna Galea, some sort of leader of this movement, has only one problem with the documentary – its title. She wants Channel 4 to change the title from “The Romanians are coming” to “The Gypsies are coming” and she also requests Channel 4 to publicly apologize for associating these Romanian citizens of Gypsy minority with her proud non-Gypsy Romanian identity.
I express my solidarity with Romanians who will silently protest against the biased coverage on our citizens by@Channel4 cc: @David_Cameron
— Victor Ponta (@Victor_Ponta) February 22, 2015
Also, for the Romanian PM it matters. He’s upset that the coverage is biased and does not show the full complexity of Romania in an one hour show and of course, he tweets David Cameron about this. Somehow, the PM’s upset is reasonable. Romania is not only about poor, but hard working people, who would sleep on the streets far away from their home to provide for their family, but it is also about corrupted politicians whose bffs illegally fund elections and then steal EU money that could have kept Ștefan at home. Maybe the PM wants to make a cameo in the next episode and present his full story.
It’s true that Ștefan and his little daughter are only one side of the Romanian coin. The other side is that of a state that failed its citizens and of Romanians that failed their peers. These two sides seem not to know about each other, but while Ștefan ignores it to be able to keep a smile on his face while his daughter is crying, the PM ignores it for an extra buck. And by buck I mean million or something of that magnitude.
There’s nothing wrong with Channel 4’s documentary. It presents reality as it is, not the whole of it, but that would be really boring, wouldn’t it? Of course there are also lots of doctors, programmers, nurses and even business people from Romania in UK and everywhere in the world (as there are Chinese, Indians and even British people everywhere in the world), but who needs Channel 4 to present them this info, must be pretty damn stupid.
I highly recommend watching this documentary, especially to my non-Romanian friends. If you have any kind of questions about the facts presented in this documentary or about Romania in general, I’ll always be happy to answer them.