Erik Jasaň’s eye-opening and poignant short film The Professional Parent shows us a world many try not to believe exists, for some children are deemed to be of the wrong ethnicity. It is a stark and important glance at an all-too-familiar problem.

Ingrid lives in a small village in eastern Slovakia, where the Roma population is the victim of a tenacious stigma. Despite this, Ingrid decides to become the legal representative of a young Roma girl, which upsets the fragile balance of her home.

There is so much being told in Erik Jasaň’s The Professional Parent that you find yourself astounded that it’s only 14 minutes long. When we see Ingrid, we pity her at first. Working multiple jobs, she is trying everything to make money to care for her daughter and to keep the roof over their heads. There are no paternal figures here; it is just Ingrid, her daughter, and her mother who must make ends meet, with the grandmother, hunched, slow and broken, having to resort to working abroad to bring money in. It’s unimaginable to consider the strife she is going through, and we feel so much for her and her predicament.

Yet, as The Professional Parent continues, that heartache the audience feels for Ingrid slowly dissipates as we see her take on Samantha and begin to treat her worse than something that was stuck to her shoe. It’s horrifying, but then we realise the sheer desperation that Ingrid has been placed in. She needs the money from Samantha, but she cannot handle caring for her; the grandmother will not be under the same roof because of her prejudices towards Romani. It’s a lose-lose situation. She is a truly lost woman, and the fact that we feel these rollercoasters of emotions for her is a testament to Ela Lehotská’s performance. The majority of the film is a subtle and quiet one, playing Ingrid as someone who has simply run out of options, and only once that last thread of a chance of a normal financial life tries to leave do we see her explode. All her emotions and angst are thrown at poor Samantha, and it’s riveting.

Those taking on the Roma children, who have sometimes been dragged from their own family situation for a myriad of possibly unfair reasons, are doing so solely for the money. So, we are pushed with the question of how can a child be raised in a manner where they know the person caring for them (even temporarily) views them as only a money spinner. With Samantha, we see a girl who just wants to be back home but has no chance of getting there. She has even possibly had this situation occur multiple times before, considering how despondent she appears when she makes it to Ingrid’s home. She knows what will happen, and Mariana Kroková does very well in the brief role.

Our one, almost shining light throughout The Professional Parent is Martinka, played by Klára Sviteková, a sickly child who knows nothing of the prejudice of those from the older generations. She sees a girl, maybe, hopefully, a new friend and wants to connect. She wants to share, play, and be around someone her own age, and the optimism she holds during this time is what makes us think that maybe not all is lost. Perhaps this generation can do something the others couldn’t. We can only hope, and that final sequence of Martinka looking at her broken mother, as she herself goes to aid Samantha, is that glimmer of hope we need to cling to in such a bleak world.

Shot with an almost typical Eastern European colour palette, you get the feeling that there is little hope throughout the film. We think we are going to see a film of struggle. While that is prominently there, it is the even harsher reality of how even when you are down at your lowest, you can still look that bit more down on other humans who are in the same boat, merely because they are Romani.

If there is one thing The Professional Parent is guaranteed to do, it is to open up important conversations about how we see and treat one another. Not all professional parents are like what we see with Ingrid. You cannot escape the truth that this is true for some. They are not doing this to be that important caregiver to a child who needs someone to learn from in an obviously difficult time. They see a child and see a profit. It’s heartbreaking but inescapable, which makes The Professional Parent such a vital viewing.

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