Pa-ra-da

The French clown Miloud Oukili arrives in Romania in 1992, three years after the fall of Ceaușescu, and comes across the children living on the streets of Bucharest. They sleep in the sewers and survive on petty theft, begging and worse. Oukili starts teaching them clowning, and despite obstruction from the police and prejudice all around, in time he builds a real circus company and the children perform in the main square of Bucharest. Marco Pontecorvo made the film from a true story; the Parada Foundation Oukili set up is still working and the troupe still tours Europe. Rather than asking for pity for the children, the film shows what they turned out to be able to do. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2008, with Jalil Lespert in the lead.