Cristian Lupșa, Elena Stancu & Cosmin Bumbuț in conversation
Between Two Worlds: The Emotional Cost of Migration
Cristian Lupșa
Cristian Lupșa is a journalist, editor, and storyteller. Between 2009 and 2022 he led DoR, a digital and print publication that became a landmark of independent Romanian journalism. He hosts The Power of Storytelling, an annual international conference held in Bucharest. He chairs the pre-selection jury of the European Press Prize, writes the occasional newsletter Draft Four, works with young journalists, supports local and regional newsrooms, and still believes that true stories, well told, can bring people together, heal, inspire, and change the world.
Elena Stancu & Cosmin Bumbuț
Photographer Cosmin Bumbuț and journalist Elena Stancu have been documenting Romanian migrant communities across Europe for six and a half years. So far they have travelled to 12 countries and published over 130 reports on seasonal workers in Germany, doctors and nurses in England, tourism employees in Portugal, farmers in Norway, naval electricians in Denmark, researchers in Sweden, students in the Netherlands, women working as cleaners in Spain, and care workers for the elderly in Italy.
The two travel by campervan and become part of the lives of those they document, their project capturing the work, daily life, and integration processes of Romanian migrants and their transnational families.
The Plecat project is the most extensive documentary project on Romanian migration in Europe. It follows, from the inside, the lives of Romanians in the diaspora: integration processes in new societies, the fragile balance between homesickness and the need to belong, the lives of transnational families, and the way migration transforms identity, values, and the relationship with Romania. It is an in-depth journalistic endeavour that illuminates the emotional and social reality of a generation that is simultaneously changing both Romania and Europe.
They have published reports on extreme poverty, domestic violence, marginalised Roma communities, life in prisons, the medicine shortage crisis, school dropout, and migration. Their work has appeared in Marie Claire, Esquire, National Geographic, Libertatea, and HotNews.ro.
They have made two documentary films: Ultimul călărar (2016), about a Roma family from southern Romania emigrating to France, and Rezidentele (2018), about Romania’s first centre for female inmates with mental illness. In 2017 they published the reportage collection Acasă, pe drum (Humanitas).