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Liviu Tipurita
Gypsy Child Thieves
Shot in Spain, Italy and Romania, December 2008-April 2009
Commissioned and broadcast by BBC Two - This World
This film highlights the plight of Roma gypsy children forced to beg and steal by organized criminal gangs from their own community - and sometimes also by their own families.
In a series of secretly-shot sequences we see the children leave squalid camps outside Madrid and Milan to spend long hours begging, picking-pockets and stealing from cash machines.
Occasionally picked up by the authorities, they are then handed back to the very people who are exploiting them. In the words of the film-makers, the film is a call for immediate action to help these children.
The judges said the film was a thorough piece of investigative journalism that made for uncomfortable viewing. One said: "Where is the love for children? - that is the question in this film. It seems to have completely gone."
Biography
Liviu Tipurita was born and raised in Romania, and came to the UK in 1991 to study film-making. Since then he has worked for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, CNN, ABC, and NBC.
He specializes in investigative documentaries about sensitive subjects - child trafficking, sex abuse, terrorism, prostitution. In 2003, Liviu made “The Child Sex Trade” for Cutting Edge/Channel 4 - a documentary investigating paedophile rings and the pan-European trafficking of children, which won several major international awards.
Read more about Gypsy Child Thieves on the BBC2 - This World website.
