The Deathless Woman

Dir. by Roz Mortimer, UK; 2019, 89´

World premiere: BFI London Film Festival – Experimenta, International premiere: Jihlava IDFF – Opus Bonum, EBS IDFF, B3 Biennale of Moving Image Frankfurt, Ake Dikhea? Festival of Romani Films; Broadcasters: EBS South Korea, EDU Rights: Alexander Street

Territories: World except of United Kingdom; Exclusive subject: Festivals & Sales

The far right are rising again in Europe. A Roma woman buried alive in a forest in Poland during WWII returns to haunt us, uncovering a history of atrocities against the Roma in Europe. She is the Deathless Woman. Motivated by rage, she rises from her grave to draw our attention to the persecution of the Roma people from the 1940s to the neo-Nazi hate crimes of the present day.

This urgent and magical hybrid documentary fluidly interweaves fantastical re-imaginings of buried secrets with the Deathless Woman’s ghostly narration and testimony from survivors and witnesses of historic and contemporary crimes against the Roma in Poland and Hungary.

The Deathless Woman is a ghost story for the 21st Century.

Loren O’Dair as The Seeker in Roz Mortimer’s feature The Deathless Woman 2019
Film still from The Deathless Woman. Wonderdog Films 2019

Category: Hybrid, Art Film, Roma holocaust, society, detective story, thriller

REVIEWS

‘A powerful and poetic account of WWII Roma genocide and its contemporary resurrection. Hugely successful on both an artistic and a political level, it is a remarkable piece of work.’
Trisha Tuttle, BFI London FF Director

‘Deathless Woman’s’ Roz Mortimer on Documenting Far Right Violence Then and Now
Variety, Will Tizard, Oct 29, 2019

‘Captivating experimental feature… Mortimer’s a supreme talent – few else could have made a movie quite like this.’
Paddy Mulholland’s review in Screen on Screen

“The Deathless Woman is a rallying call against the far right, warning us that history repeats itself…”
Joel Whitaker’s review in Dog and Wolf

DIRECTOR

Roz Mortimer is a London-based filmmaker. She originally trained as a textile artist, exhibiting mixed media installations in the UK and Europe before expanding her practice to include film, photography, sound, performance and writing. She began working with moving image in 1995 and since then her award-winning films have been exhibited widely around the world. Her work has been commissioned and supported by Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, British Council, Film London Artist’s Moving Image Network, Animate Projects and Channel 4 Television. The Deathless Woman is her 2nd feature.