I MATTER

Press & Industry Screening: Tuesday, 8 Sept | 14:00 | Sala Giardino
World Premiere: Tuesday, 8 Sept | 21:00 | Sala Giardino
Screenings: www.labiennale.org

101 min. / Romania, Germany, Belgium / feature

Trailer:

Director Alina Șerban is available for interviews.

I MATTER (Eu Contez) by writer-director Alina Șerban is world premiering at the Venice International Film Festival 2026. The feature directorial debut by the acclaimed actress (Alone at My Wedding, Gipsy Queen) screens in the. Venice Spotlight section. It is the first film by a Roma woman to be selected for an A-list festival, marking Șerban’s return to Venice as a filmmaker following her role in Housekeeping for Beginners (Goran Stolevski, Venice Orizzonti 2023). The film brings an intimate and empowering first-person perspective to the screen.

As a Roma woman who experienced poverty, discrimination, eviction, and institutionalization Alina Șerban draws on her own journey to explore identity, belonging, and the experience of being a minority. Through her work in theatre and film, she has spent the past 15 years creating space for Roma stories from a Roma perspective. In I MATTER, she offers an intersectional view through the main character’s eyes, inviting audiences to consider what it means to live in a world where “normal” is often defined as white and part of a family.

SYNOPSIS
As she stands on the verge of leaving the orphanage she called home, Rebeca, a young Roma girl, clings to the hope that her father’s release from prison will finally give her the family she has always longed for. When she is accepted into university to study acting, life finally seems to be opening up for her. But just as Rebeca begins to find her place in this new world, the life she comes from starts to catch up with her, forcing her to make choices she can no longer postpone.

Alina Șerban is an internationally acclaimed actress, playwright, and theatre and film director. Her leading role in Alone at My Wedding, selected at the Cannes Film Festival, and her
performance in Gipsy Queen earned her multiple Best Actress awards. She also starred in the Venice-selected Housekeeping for Beginners. A graduate of UNATC Bucharest, NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art(RADA), she is a Knight of the Order of Cultural Merit in Romania.

I MATTER is produced by microFILM, 2PilotsFilmproduction, Frakas Productions in co-production with ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel in association with ARTE, Lemming Film Belgium, Avanpost Media, Orange & Be tv, Proximus, Shelter Prod,v Romanian Television. Supported by Romanian Film Center, The Government of Romania, Creative Europe – Media Programme of the European Union, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Film and Audiovisual Centre of Wallonia Brussels Federation, Tax shelter of the Belgian Federal Government, Taxshelter.be & ING, The Belgian Development Cooperation.
Developed & presented during Agora Coproduction Market, Thessaloniki 2023 – Arte Kino Award; Les Arcs Coproduction Market, 2023; Script2Film Lab, Mediterranean Film Institute, 2024; Less is More Workshop, 2021; Torino Short Film Market, 2021; ArtFem Residency, 2020.

Production Company:
microFILM – Ada Solomon, Carla Fotea
microfilm.romania@gmail.com
http://www.microfilm.eu

World Sales:
Pluto Film
Daniela Cölle
daniela@plutofilm.de
plutofilm.de

©/CREDITS:

Stills: © microFILM