Transnistria was still part of the Soviet Union when German and Romanian troops invaded in 1941. Along with many Jewish deportees, some 25,000 Roma were transported there from Romania. The prisoners were interred in appalling conditions, a massacre perpetrated in slow motion: half of the deportees starved or froze to death, if not killed by typhoid or acts of arbitrary violence first. The unimaginable scale of this atrocity is conveyed by “Valley of Sighs”, which interviews survivors (children at the time) and eye-witnesses from surrounding villages, and unearths military and police documents that plot the “progress” of the on-going genocide. The result is a multi-layered filmic monument to the victims of a little-known chapter of the Ηolocaust – and one that continues, in Romania, to be a taboo subject.
Andrei Crisan
Born in 1987 in Romania, he studied film at Babeş Bolyai University. He is the co-founder of Triba Film and has worked on numerous documentary and feature projects.
Iulia Elena Hossu
Born in 1979 in Romania, she graduated in anthropology and intercultural studies. She has worked at Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities (RIRNM) and is the co-founder of Triba Film.
Mihai Andrei Leaha
Mihai Andrei Leaha is an audio-visual researcher and filmmaker working in South America. His films have been shown at various film festivals and won prizes. As a board member of Commission on Visual Anthropology, IUAES, and other organizations, he is involved in curating, promoting, and programming ethnographic films at various conferences and festivals. He has taught visual anthropology in Cluj and São Paulo. He has also organized conferences and workshops on visual and multimodal anthropology in Romania, Brazil and Peru. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo, conducting research on the DIY electronic music scene in São Paulo.