all the love in my body — carmen baltzar

all the love in my body 13’ (2026)

Two young Romani sisters offer an unseen perspective on European beach life.

all the love in my body unfolds on a sunny beach in Greece from the point of view of Nadia and Samara, two young Romani sisters selling wooden turtles. The girls navigate the beach with wit, boredom, joy and frustration, interacting with a varied cast of sunbathers. Samara is focused on sales, while her younger sister Nadia gets caught up in people-watching and daydreams. Their day takes a jarring turn before the sun goes down.

SCREENINGS

premiere

66th Kraków Film Festival - International Competition

upcoming

Sarajevo Film Festival
Helsinki International Film Festival
Drama International Short Film Festival
TBA

past

SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Tukino Romani Film Festival
ShorTSIFF
Curtocircuiti

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Shooting Format Digital, Arri Alexa 35

Aspect Ratio 1.78:1 (16:9) and 1.5:1

Frame Rate 24 fps

Sound 5.1 Stereo

Running Time 14 minutes 27 seconds

Languages Greek, Romani, English, Norwegian

Subtitles English, Finnish, Greek

Countries of Production Finland, Greece

CAST

Samara Christina Konstantina Louka

Nadia Dimitra Louka

Alika Samuel Akinola

Frenchman Jean Jacque Tesson

Barbra Kjaerti Aandahl Solounias

Swimming Man Victor Benouzilio

Marianne Angela Fabre

Lisa Sandra Sarafanova

Monika Ingrid Gedikoglou

Steffen Kent Vorland

Flirty Girl Sofia Kostara

Flirty Guy Jairo Garcia Macias

Old Lady Stella Ioannithou

DIRECTOR'S WORD

In 2008, two young Romani sisters Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic drowned on a beach in Torregaveta, Italy while selling wooden objects to beachgoers. After their lifeless bodies were carried back to shore and covered with beach towels, people continued sunbathing indifferently around them for hours. Photos of this event surfaced in Italian media afterwards.

Looking at the images, I tried to imagine Violetta's and Cristina's day; what they saw, heard, felt. I wanted to know what recreating the day from their perspective would reveal, and in the absence of real-life Violetta and Cristina I turned towards fiction and the visual medium of film. I named the protagonists Nadia and Samara to separate them from their real-life counterparts. Konstantina and Dimitra, who play the leading parts, added their own touch to the ways the characters talk and move through the world.

The script echoes old children's tales where a protagonist meets a cast of characters who all reveal something about the world they inhabit. The story is told almost entirely from Nadia's POV. Through her eyes, the beach appears enchanted. The softness and vibrancy stands in contrast to things in the sisters' realities that are not appropriate for their age, like having to work and interacting with unpredictable strangers. The film is a collision of things that shouldn't exist in the same reality.

Our fictional script could take place anywhere in Europe with beaches and a warm climate. We ended up in Greece because the producer, Danai Anagnostou, is familiar with the local film industry and language. We met Konstantina and Dimitra in a Roma community in Athens, and decided to work together because they were enthusiastic about the project and mesmerising on camera. I connected with Konstantina and Dimitra through translation apps, body language and the help of Fotini Parachristopoulou, our acting coach, who also translated for us and came along in the rehearsal stage.

A grandmother appears in the film as a voice. After Cristina and Violetta drowned, their grandmother Vera Carig cursed the beachgoers with all the love in her body in a newspaper interview. She emphasised she used her love for her grandchildren in her curse because she refused to enter the cycle of hate. The film is a visualisation of this curse and the curse itself.