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Abstract
Gadjo Dilo was directed in 1997 by Tony Gatlif, a French filmmaker about whom it is often specified that he is of Roma origin. The main topic of this road movie is not multilingualism but as many of the works studied in the second part of this volume, Gadjo Dilo represents the encounter between subjects who must find ways to communicate in some European linguistic borderzone, because they do not speak the same language. We follow a Frenchman, Stéphane, who travels to a small village in Romania, to look for a singer he will never find. Instead, he will take the time to discover a new language, or rather what it means to learn the rudiments of a minority language in the absence of any educational or institutional frame.
Introduction
Stéphane, the main protagonist of Gad/o Dilo, is apparendy much more interested in the Roma's music than in their language. The young Parisian is obsessed with a certain Nora Luca, a Rom singer he hopes to meet and record. The opening scenes seem to promise a film about the Roma and their haunting music, an approach that risks confirming rather that resisting one of the positive stereotypes about Romani culture. Stéphane is keen on finding Nora Luca because her name was scribbled on a tape that his father used to listen to before he died.
When he arrives in the village she is befriended by an old man, Izidor, who lets insists that he stays at this house. Stéphane keeps asking everyone about Nora Luca but at the beginning of the film, he does not seem able to break through the language barrier. He speaks neither Romani nor Romanian and his hosts do not speak French. As spectators, we are sometimes helped by subtitles but, as we will discover at the same pace as the main character, the logic of Stéphane's exchange with the Roma cannot be reduced to words. Something else is at work that we cannot understand at first. His hosts never refuse to help him find the mysterious Nora Luca, but somehow, she will never be found. And since the protagonists speak different languages, it is not clear whether the Roma do not know what he wants, whether they lead...