Tata

A daughter's quest to break the cycle of toxic masculinity that casts its shadow over her family and nation.

When Lina's father requests help with an abusive employer in Italy, she feels conflicting emotions for a man who was violent with her and the other women in her family in the past. Lina decides to help him and in so doing confront the most painful parts of her past so as not to repeat them in the future.

"Emotion in a man is weakness. You must have control, an iron fist. Keep your children in check. I worked four jobs and put food on the table. What did I do wrong? You don't listen. I barely touched you. Use your head. Don't talk back."

"To escape the violence I had to look inside myself. If I was not perfect, I was beaten. I felt worthless, shame. He is obsessed. Arguments are endless. It's always my fault. He plays the victim. Love doesn't hurt."

While watching Tata and for a long while afterwards I couldn't drop my preconceived notions of what the film should be about and just let the filmmaker tell her story. I'm happy she finally won this battle in my head. Now, after thinking about the film, I better realize her intentions and meaning. She let her dad speak his mind and play his hand, without judgment, interference, or lack of support. What true journalistic and healing spirit Lina reveals in this documentary. The directors are partners and parents in real life. They attended and answered questions at this world premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

'Tata' (2024) is the second film by director Radu Ciorniciuc after 'Acasa, My Home' in which he builds an entire cinematic universe starting from a special life story. Material that for many other filmmakers would result in a film exposed from the perspective of the documentarian, is transformed in this second film by Radu Ciorniciuc into an immersive story, with the expressiveness and fluency of a fiction movie. In 'Tata', however, the emotion is amplified by the fact that it is a personal story filmed in the family of the director's partner, Lina Vdovii, who is also the script author and the co-director. The result is at the same time a quality documentary and one of the best family dramas I have seen recently.

The film has two main themes that are skillfully combined, being put into perspective and gradually revealing the connection between them. The reporter travels with her partner to Italy to meet her father, Pavel, who left his native Republic of Moldova over two decades ago to work there and support his family at home, consisting of his wife and three daughters (Lina is the middle sister). The two immediately witness the abuse, violence and humiliation that the single man is forced to submit to, working as a winegrower and janitor for an Italian owner. Double accounting, hours worked and not reported for which he is not paid his social rights, verbal and even physical violence - all directed against the immigrant who has no support in defending his rights. The young people decide to help the father, film with a hidden camera to document the abuses, hire a lawyer, file a complaint and start a legal action so that Pavel can receive compensation and regain his rights. At the same time, Lina's memory returns to episodes from her childhood and adolescence. Pavel, who is now a victim of exploitation as an immigrant, was a tyrannical father who kept his home in domestic terror, a father who was severe to the point of violence. As the trial unfolds in Italy, Lina investigates the sources of violence in her own family. Raised in a patriarchal system that had overlapped the deprivations and indifference of the communist period, Pavel had not understood the harm that through the severity and violence of his methods he had done to the others in the family and especially to the women. Not only Lina and her sisters, but also her mother had been the victim of these mentalities transmitted from generation to generation.

As in a good fiction film script, we are dealing in 'Tata' with a gradual revelation of the different facets of the characters. The VHS tapes filmed in the late 1990s play the role of flashbacks. The most eloquent are the dialogues, especially those between father and daughter and those between the women in the family. The two authors of the film managed to make the protagonists express themselves naturally in the presence of the cameras, giving the impression at many moments that they ignore them. 'Tata' is an excellent family drama, but also an incisive and well-targeted documentary social investigation. Radu Ciorniciuc is a filmmaker who has a lot to say and does it in an expressive and original way. To watch.