This gorgeous, exuberant, and movingpaean to Gypsy music and history is neither documentary nor fiction: it fallswondrously between the cracks, like Rom (Gypsy) culture itself in its manyenclaves from India to Spain. Latcho drom means "safe journey," andthat is what director Tony Gatlif wishes his people (he is French, Algerian-born,with Rom roots). But the odyssey his film chronicles-without narration, and onlythe songs to tell the tale-has been anything but safe. Amid the lyrics about loveand wanderings are those about a common fate of the world's scapegoats, wellbefore Auschwitz and Ceausescu, and continuing today in the "new"Eastern Europe. Gatlif traveled to a dozen countries-including India, Egypt,Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, France, and Spain-to film the superlativesingers, dancers, and musicians whose lives are performance, and whose stage isthe landscape they roam.