“The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters” is the result of an ample process of documentation, which carries over to the screen in a powerful way: we meet the protagonists of the film, Peli, his wife Nina and his sister Băra, steadfast in their worries over several years. The cinematic gesture operated here by Cătălina Tesăr and Dana Bunescu is not merely anthropological – it inevitably becomes a compensatory one: a way of drawing attention to a rural community (the ‘cortorari’ Roma), the members of which appear recurrently, covered both in stigma and mystery, on the beautifully paved streets in the centre of the country. Film as a medium proves to be, in this case, some sort of supplement to academic observation – it brings with it the act of recording, colour, performance. A complex ethnic tradition thus reveals itself to us, to the extent that inheritance anxiety and the strictness of the marriage ritual regulate, for better or worse, the life of these young people. In a world that moves incessantly – we see Peli dressed as a clown on the streets of Italy –, the ‘cortorari’ Roma persist in an unwritten law, which conditions and simultaneously becomes an occasion for individual reflection. The directorial gaze doesn’t judge, but invites an act of empathy with those around us. (Victor Morozov)