30/04/2023 - Mira Erdevicki’s documentary offers three tales of Roma assimilation in the UK, but little more

Centred on three Roma people living in the UK and composed entirely of footage shot by the subjects themselves, Mira Erdevicki’s Leaving to Remain (released in the UK on Friday 28 April by Verve Pictures) paints an inherently subjective picture of what life may offer to people belonging to this minority group — any generality presented in the film regarding the UK’s hospitality or inhospitality towards Roma people comes straight from the mouths of the subjects. It nevertheless seems unwise to present these three (largely positive) experiences without contextualising information about what living in this country is like for a majority of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers, especially because the situation is so dire, and still so little known. A shocking study published just this month revealed a much less rosy reality than that seen in the film, with 62% of Gypsy or Traveller people claiming they had experienced a racial assault — a figure much higher than for any other ethnic minority group. 

The only contextualising we get is patchy and, again, very subjective, coming through the subjects’ own work in Roma assimilation. Originally living in the Czech Republic, Denisa first came to the UK working as a cleaner, but she eventually became the first Roma British lawyer and now helps members of her community in their legal affairs. Much of her workload during the time of filming is concerned with getting her clients settled status and “indefinite right to leave” in the UK following Brexit, as the deadline for applications looms. The xenophobia is there in plain sight, but Denisa (or the edited version of her that the film gets us to see) refrains from drawing this conclusion, perhaps to better retain the motivation that will see her through this taxing period.

Meanwhile, Petr’s work in community service in Peterborough suggests the need for better integration of Roma communities within UK cities, or rather for more tolerance and understanding from others. But Petr himself, like the film’s third subject Ondrej, repeatedly speaks of his experience in the UK as entirely free from racism, and this contrast (or contradiction) remains frustratingly unexplored and unexplained in the film. 

What does become clear is that this positivity partly stems from comparatively negative experiences in the subjects’ countries of origin. All three explain that they were put in schools for children with special needs as kids, an apparently widespread discriminatory practice that sought to keep Roma children apart from others. Petr and his family moved to the UK after being repeatedly attacked by skinheads in the Czech Republic, and were pleasantly surprised that strangers in the UK wouldn’t switch sidewalk when passing them in the street. 

These three figures who have decided to spend a considerable amount of their time and energy fighting for the rights of Roma people in the UK are undoubtedly inspiring — all the more so for how ordinary they otherwise appear. Beside their work, Erdevicki’s film also shows their daily activities, their families, their responsibilities as parents or, in Ondrej’s case, as a soon-to-be father. This decision to show these subjects as individuals rather than as data points in an ethnographic study is of course laudable. But by choosing these three specific people, the film also strives to give the sense of a community coming together to protect its own — a feeling that is somewhat undermined and muddled by the omission of the wider, more representative, less auspicious known facts of Roma hostility in the UK. 

Leaving to Remain was produced by Slovakia’s PubRes, UK-based Spring Films, the Czech Republic’s Krutart, Czech Television - Česká televize, and Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska - Radio and Television Slovakia.