Roma filmmaker Alina Șerban broke barriers long before she set foot on the red carpet this week at the Venice Film Festival, where her feature-length directorial debut, “I Matter,” world premieres in the Venice Spotlight section.

Rising from an impoverished background to become a celebrated stage star in Romania, the actress and directing debutante has defied all odds to reach the starry heights of the Lido. Billed as the first feature from a female Roma director to screen at an A-list festival, “I Matter” marks the latest chapter in her life-long quest to reframe the narrative around her marginalized community.

Șerban, nevertheless, is taking it all in stride.

In a related development, “I’m nervous about the pressure of being ‘the first’ — all the firsts,” she tells Variety. “But I also have this immense relief, and the feeling of being grateful that I managed to pull through something almost impossible.”

Inspired by Șerban’s own life, “I Matter” tells the story of a young Roma woman studying to be an actor. She’s faced with the threat of being kicked out of her orphanage and must suddenly embrace her identity and confront the reality of making it through life on her own. Based on the 2021 short of the same name, whose festival run included New Directors/New Films, it’s produced by microFILM, 2Pilots Filmproduction, Frakas Prods. and Lemming Film, with international sales handled by Pluto Film.

For Șerban, the premiere is a capstone in what has already been a remarkable career. Raised in poverty in Bucharest, she was placed in a state-run orphanage at an early age before becoming the first member of her family to graduate from high school. After attending Bucharest’s Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography, she was accepted into NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, then later earned a master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Furthermore, when she returned to Romania, she mounted an acclaimed one-woman show about her life, focusing not only on the rampant discrimination she faced, but on her triumphs and joys. By her 30th birthday, Șerban had written and staged pioneering plays that championed a radical, feminist, Roma perspective — trying, she says, “to show the humanity of these people. Not to portray them as victims nor villains. Not to self-exoticize. But also to celebrate ourselves.”

“I Matter” stars newcomer Denisa Farcaș, bringing both vulnerability and determination to a lead role that she invests with her own life experience, based on to the director. Șerban describes working with Farcaș and her co-stars as a “collaborative process,” one in which the group delved deep into “what it means to be accepted” as Roma women while giving the young actors space to “express themselves — to feel that they also own the story.”

This isn’t Șerban’s first visit to the Venice Film Festival; she attended in 2023 with the cast and crew of Goran Stolevski’s “Housekeeping for Beginners,” in which she had a supporting role. But this year’s experience will be something else entirely for the director. Nearly two dozen of the cast members of “I Matter” will be in attendance — including the 16 child performers who populated the film’s orphanage — while Roma band Mahala Rai Banda will serenade the red-carpet arrivals.

“This is such a historical moment for me, and also for the Roma community,” Șerban says. “It’s a moment of celebration. And I want to look back and say I did everything in my power for the people in the team to [share this] moment. And also to put into the world a message of dignity, of celebration, of pain that needs to be seen.”