This World
BBC Two, 7pm
Liviu Tipurita’s superb film is the best sort of campaigning documentary — compassionate, clear-eyed and committed. He shows how thousands of Romanian Gypsy children are living in makeshift, rat-infested camps across Europe and forced to steal, either by their own families or criminal gangs. Some 95 per cent of children picked up by the police in Madrid are Romanian, and in Italy the thieving has become so widespread that it has prompted a right-wing backlash. The 50 children who operate as pickpockets around Milan’s main railway station each make on average €400 (£345) a day. “These people should be shot,” one Italian says. Unfortunately, the Gypsies have been excluded for so long from mainstream society that stealing has become a profession passed down from one generation to the next and huge villas are now being built in Romania from the proceeds of child exploitation.
Should be a good watch
