In Tata, directors Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc (Acasa, My Home; 2020) present a layered exploration on the complexities of reflection and reconciliation. Premiering at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, the film is both an intimate familial narrative and a broader social critique of embedded patriarchal structures, migrant exploitation, and domestic violence in a region (and world) seemingly mired in constant economic and ideological transition.
![Tata Lina Vdovîi, Radu Ciorniciuc](https://www.moderntimes.review/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/modern-times-review-tata1.jpg)
Distant and disorientated
The film follows Lina’s journey to reconnect with her estranged father, Pavel, a Moldovan migrant worker in Italy, after receiving a video showing extensive bruising on his arms. What begins as an attempt to understand his suffering in the pursuit of justice becomes a dissection into the unresolved traumas that have shaped their family for decades, if not generations.
The initial meeting between father and daughter is palpably stiff; Lina’s body is rigid, her eyes distant, during their awkward embrace. Pavel seems equally disoriented. Paranoia dominates his mindset; when a car passes by his home, he insists they move inside, wary of being filmed in public. After 25 years of exploited labour, his world has shrunk—fear and vulnerability now define him as much as his authoritarianism once had.
Pavel’s vulnerability, however, contrasts with the imposing man he put forth. As a result, Lina’s memories of him are tinged with trauma and self-doubt. It becomes clear that Pavel ruled his family with an iron fist. His view of manhood, shared by many of his era, equates emotions with weakness. For men like Pavel, strength is synonymous with control, and this defines how he treats his family. For his generation, «men have to appear strong and confident,» Lina explains.
In contrast to Pavel’s rigidity, the older women in his life offer a more subservient depiction of these internalised values. Lina’s mother and grandmother display a resigned, almost passive acceptance of their roles within the family structure. Unlike Lina, who seeks answers and resolution, they have adapted to the confines of their patriarchal environment through diplomacy and some wiley psychological tactics. On the other hand, Lina is pregnant with her first child and stands at a crossroads. As she prepares to become a mother, she faces the task of reconciling with her father while also breaking the cycle of violence for the sake of her unborn child—a daughter.
What complicates the narrative of absolute authoritarianism is Pavel’s own suffering. Having left Moldova for economic reasons, he now works as a grape picker and handyman, occupations rife with exploitation. Pavel’s bruises are the marks of a man beaten down by a system that preys on migrant labourers, physically and emotionally. Just as he once dominated his family through gendered power, he is now dominated by those with financial power. The grainy hidden camera footage Lina equips him with captures precarious conditions marked by irregular hours, substandard pay, and inhumane treatment. In this age of the widest class separation since the age of revolution, he could literally be any one of millions.
Just as Pavel once dominated his family, he is now dominated by those with financial power over him.
Exploitation culture
Recent data on migrant exploitation in Italy paints a grim picture, particularly for Romanians/Moldovans like Pavel, who are among the most vulnerable in the agricultural workforce. Over 24% of workers in the sector are employed irregularly, often under the caporalato system—a form of illegal intermediation rife for unsafe working conditions. Migrants, many of whom work seasonally or lack official status, are frequently subjected to wage theft, lack of safety equipment, and exploitative living conditions. A 2024 Oxfam report highlighted that millions of migrant farm workers across Europe, including Italy, are paid below minimum wage, and many face sexual abuse, intimidation, and violence if they attempt to protest these conditions—as we see when Pavel finally does so.
By its end, Tata simultaneously offers and resists closure. While there is a resolution to Pavel’s working woes, there isn’t one within his family. Though there are moments of fleeting connection between Lina and Pavel, the film remains acutely aware of the long, often broken road to forgiveness. Pavel engages in table-side conversations on self-reflection, simultaneously justifying his actions through the lens of his own victimisation (he only inflicted beatings because his four jobs prevented the «time to talk»). His ultimate return to his wife raises further doubts about whether actual change is possible.
![Tata Lina Vdovîi, Radu Ciorniciuc](https://www.moderntimes.review/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/modern-times-review-tata2.jpg)
Different definitions
Where the film does not veer is into the relationship between the macro nature of the authoritarian society Pavel grew up in (Soviet Moldova) and its effect on the micro nature of the family where a brutal society creates brutal people; authoritarians create authoritarians. Or, in modern psych-slang, «hurt people hurt people.» In my own experiences with the immediate family of that generation, and from that region, this is a much more nuanced consequence of their behaviour than they often will admit. There is a frame of reference that is simply different from the concealed post-war world (Pavel) to the open post-communist one (Lina). One where the definitions of abuse, trauma, and the resulting depression are merely theoretical concepts, if not outright biological mistruths to the former. For example, Pavel might justify physically disciplining his children for poor grades as parental respect and discipline, but this doesn’t confront the ingrained reliance on violence as a form of control, reinforcing a cycle of emotional repression.
Still, in a world where patriarchal and capitalist systems continue to shape the lives of the most vulnerable, Tata offers an unflinching look at both complexities. Pavel is neither wholly villainous nor wholly sympathetic. He is not simply an abuser nor a victim of migrant exploitation; he is both, as well as a now powerless man caught in a web of societal forces beyond his control—a reminder of how the personal is always, inevitably, political.