Mondo - Part 7 of 8

The title character in this film, Mondo, is a Gypsy boy of eleven or twelve who lives in the streets of Nice, in southern France. As he wanders around flashing a winning smile and asking strangers if they would like to adopt him, we meet other people of the streets and see how they live from day to day.

This film does not have the tragic power of Pixote or Salaam Bombay but don't let its lyrical pace and occasionally overt sentimentality fool you. It's not all gloom and doom in the streets - anyone who has worked with street children will agree that there are many who have the same charm and vivacity as Mondo, children whose absolute poverty seems not to have destroyed their innocence but to have intensified it.

Yet like Pixote and Salaam Bombay this film is also a tragedy, though not so much a tragedy for Mondo as for the society in which he lives. It shows how even in the most developed countries we have not developed adequate institutional means of caring for children such as Mondo and so
we lose them, and the loss is ours, more than theirs.

Mondo is one of a trilogy of films of Gypsy life directed by Tony Gatlif. Ovidiu Balan, who plays Mondo in this film, also appears briefly in another film in the trilogy, aged about 15.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• street
• children
• child
• boy
• kid
• Mondo
• Tony
• Gatlif
• Nice
• France
• Gypsy
• Ovidiu
• Balan

[Teknmask]

akward moment @ 9:30

[lilnelva95]

so he falls on the ground and no one tries to help him?@

[johndilan]

his smile could melt an ice-berg i suppose

[n0rbas]

He says ''Dadi'' - this is the old men's name.

[jkatyt5]

What is it he says @ 2.10mins?

Daddy?

[zambrano2006]

Nice history