Toto and His Sisters

Nine-year-old Toto lives with his teenage sisters Ana and Andreea in a barely habitable apartment building on the outskirts of Bucharest. Toto’s mother has been in prison for drug dealing for over four years, and his uncles use the apartment as a meeting place to sell and take drugs. In this close-up portrait of three Roma children at the bottom end of society, German-Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau tells the story largely from their perspective, at a child’s eye level. He includes footage from Andreea’s video diary, filmed with a camera he provided. The result is an intimate and moving impression of the children’s daily lives. We see Toto on a filthy sofa bed, lying next to someone shooting up. We go with him to the "children’s club," where he learns not only reading and telling time, but also street dance. Will he manage to free himself from the clutches of poverty and stay away from drugs? Until the very end, we are torn between hoping for the best and fearing the worst.