TATA/FATHER

Lina Vdovii, Radu Ciorniciuc / Romania, Italy, Germany / 2023

After leaving Moldova to escape her abusive father, a young journalist returns to confront him, only to learn that he is being violently abused by his employer in Italy. Her investigation leads to the exploration of her own victimization at his hands.

Lina starts to research into her own past in order to heal from her father’s atrocious violence. When she was a child, he used to beat her and her mother with fists and leather belts. Only when he found a job at a winery in northern Italy did the cruelty stopped.

Lina could never forgive him. When she moved to Romania to become a student, she stopped answering his calls, but after a painful divorce and years of therapy, she decides to confront him. In Italy, she learns that the man who abused her is a victim of violent abuse himself. His Italian boss has been beating him. Her father asks her for help and Lina gives him a hidden camera. When she gets the footage, she discovers not only gruesome images of the beatings, but also video messages her father recorded in which he asks for forgiveness and a place in her life.

Filmed in Moldova, Romania and Italy, TATA is a personal feature documentary that explores how a father and his daughter are trying to break a cycle of violence that has existed in their family and in their culture for generations.