Safe Journey

The film follows the thousand year migration route of the Roma: it begins in the desert of Rajasthan, passes through Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and France, and ends in Andalusia. At every stop the Roma of that region make music. There is no narrator, no interview, no explanatory text. There is only music and the road. Tony Gatlif writes and directs. Born in Algeria and of Roma descent, he made a series of films about Roma culture, and this is the middle one of that group. The form sits between documentary and fiction. The scenes are arranged and the musicians play for the camera, but nothing is a reconstruction; each community performs its own music in its own place. The title is a wish for a good journey in the Romani language. The musical connection is shown directly: the shape of a melody in India reappears in the Balkans and then in Andalusian flamenco. That continuity is the film's real argument. It screened at the Cannes film festival in 1993. Exile and exclusion are conveyed not by speech but through the words of the songs; in the Romanian section a woman sings a lament about the camps. Who it is for: viewers who like world music and documentaries in unusual forms. Who it is not for: there is no plot and no character, and for anyone uninterested in music the film will pass by empty.