Radio România Internațional

Tag: documentary

Writer Nora Iuga, the subject of a documentary film

One of the most successful Romanian films last year
was Nora, written and directed by Carla-Maria Teaha. The first foray into
documentary film-making from Teaha, who has previously worked as an actor and
radio journalist, the film follows Nora Iuga, one of the most important writers
in this country, who turned 93 years old on 4th January. Released in
2023 at the Transylvania International Film Festival and also screened at
Anonimul and Astra Film Festival, Nora creates a touching portrait of
this charismatic writer and poet who made her debut in 1968 with a
book of poems (Vina nu e a mea), received a number of awards from the Writers’
Union and has remained very active, publishing an autobiographical
novel (Hipodrom) in 2020 and another book of poems in 2023 (Fetiţa strigă-n
pahar, Nemira).

Shot over the course of four years, the film also
captures Nora Iuga’s fascinating inner life as she has retained her
youth and contagious exuberance, as well as the special friendship
between her and the director, who accompanies Iuga at the Frankfurt
Book Fair. We spoke to Carla-Maria Teaha about how she created
the documentary film and the enthusiastic response of the public:

I didn’t have a certain script in
mind, especially for our trip to Frankfurt. From the very beginning I
wanted the dialogue to be created by speaking freely with Nora. Starting
from what would appear to be mere chit-chat, my intention was
to get Nora Iuga to tell her stories, because along with other qualities,
she is a fascinating story-teller and the camera loves her. This is why I never
felt the need to introduce other characters that would speak about her. As this
is my first film and I didn’t have a lot of experience in this area, I relied a
lot on my intuition and I wanted to show Nora Iuga as I see her. I decided I
wanted it to be a film about this Nora Iuga even if I would fail, so I based it
on the chemistry between us and the things that I find touching about her. And
what’s fascinating is that people were able to relate to me, to this image I
had of her. Deep down I hoped this would happen, I hoped Nora Iuga’s charm
would have the same effect on the public that she had on me. Moreover, I worked
very hard on this film. I was brimming with joy at the reaction of the
audience, when, at TIFF, the film received standing ovations after the first
screening, on June 14 last year. People also stayed for the Q&A session,
nobody left. And somehow that very strong impact the film had on the audience
did not diminish at all, after the screening in theatres people stay in there a
little longer and applaud, even though we’re not speaking about a special event
and we are not there with them to have discussions. I am very happy because of that, I am happy
because film had such an impact and because it has done its job, I am happy it
touches people. I really thought it was just as normal for Nora Iuga’s fans to
be keen on watching the film, but I am also glad that even those who didn’t
know her or were unfamiliar with her work, fell in love with her. So many
people told me that, having watched the documentary, they bought her books,
searched for interviews with her, they were even looking for info about her. It
is wonderful that, through this film, we succeeded to bring fil aficionados and
reader together, these two bubbles somehow met, which is great, I think.

Before becoming a writer, Nora Iuga wanted to become
an actress, so the documentary made by Carla Maria-Teaha made Nora Iuga’s dream
come true.

To tell you the truth, I wanted
to become an actress ever since I was in high-school. I ‘ve always wanted to
become an actress, perhaps it is something that comes from my family, my
parents were artists and so were my grandparents. My mother was a ballerina,
father, a violinist, one of the grannies was an opera singer, a grandparent was
a stage director, so I never thought of myself as taking a career path which
was different from that of an actress. I have always dreamed of that, what’s
most astonishing is the fact that I have never ceased to want to become an
actress, even after the great actor Radu Beligan flunked me at the Drama School
admission exam, telling me my elocution was not good enough. I personally do
not think there is a problem with my elocution, other people didn’t tell me
that either, yet I cannot question Radu Beligan either. Now, returning to the film
made by Carla Maria Teaha, as days go by, it comes as something clearer and
clearer to me that it was all about a miracle, a very old dream of mine came
true just now, after a lifetime.

Mircea Cărtărescu heaped praise on Nora Iuga’s most
recent poetry volume. Fetita striga-n pahar is hitherto the peak
of Nora Iuga’s poetry and one of the most powerful poetry books I have read
recently. It is like a shrapnel exploding in your face, spreading splinters,
shards, rough pieces of metal, of memory, of brain, of quotes, of any kind of
stuff suitable to write on your skin the judgement of a fragmented, abused
beauty .

6 July 2024
“Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife,” a documentary road movie by Alexandru Solomon

The feature film “Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife,” a documentary road movie written and directed by Alexandru Solomon and inspired by the life of the monk Arsenie Boca and the cult created around him, has recently reached Romanian cinema halls.

The film premiered at the 57th Karlovy Vary Festivals “Proxima” competition and will also be part of the national selection of the Astra Film Festival between October 15 and 22.

Screened in several cities in Romania, the film has already generated heated debates and controversies. Two public institutions cancelled the screening of Alexandru Solomons work, and the Sibiu Archbishopric called on the organisers of Astra Film Festival to ban the screening of the documentary. Astra Film Festivals organisers replied, “A documentary has the unique capacity to bring to the forefront peoples actual problems and debates, to invite the public to look at a topic from several different perspectives. A documentary carries the imprint of the values shared by its producers, and it often touches on highly sensitive topics, to which the public may respond very differently. And this is a gain. We all want an open society, with people who are free in all respects.”

Alexandru Solomons documentary follows Arsenie Boca, the monk persecuted by the communist regime, in a staged pilgrimage. The pilgrims and the director retrace the miracles allegedly performed by Arsenie Boca, discuss them and take turns making confessions. Through the eyes of the believers scrutinised by a sceptical director, the film actually depicts how the Romanian society reflects in the image of this human about to be canonised.

Alexandru Solomon. “I think the Arsenie Boca phenomenon is quite relevant for how the Romanian society works at present. This is a phenomenon, a construct that has taken shape under our eyes over the past 30 years. And what is interesting is that few monks or saints have had such a reach, such popularity in the 21st Century. Im talking here about this cult that has grown steadily since Arsenie Bocas death in 1989. This has been the direction of my effort, as I have already said the film is not and is not intended to be a biography of Arsenie Boca, even though it retraces some scenes from his life. This is in fact why I resorted to this formula which is somehow borderline fiction, because this cult is a series of layers of fiction, of legend built upon true facts. And ultimately one can no longer distinguish between what is invented and what is historical fact. I was interested in this way of fictionalising a real person and in how, at the end of the day, legend becomes more powerful than history.”

Alexandru Solomon believes the legend of father Arsenie Boca fills a void created in many Romanians by the disenchantment of the past decades. As the director puts it, it is a film about how “the Romanian society reflects in this cult, in this construct of a very popular character, which offers hope and comfort during these times.”

Alexandru Solomon: “What I tried to understand, beyond the influence of the Orthodox Church on all our lives, was the popular foundation of this type of cult, of this kind of thinking, a kind of magical thinking after all, which breaks with Europes rationalist tradition. And its not a local, Romanian occurrence alone. If you look around the world, there is a resurgence of magical thinking, from the conspiracy theories in America, to Turkey, Poland and elsewhere. As for Romania, I believe very broad categories of people have an acute sense of social abandonment, and they find hope and comfort in this area, in religion. And the confusion I speak about at the end of the film has to do with my conclusion that, no matter how one compares legends with historical fact, magical thinking with reason, there is a barrier between them, a wall that cannot be overcome. People will listen to rational explanations, they will read about the facts, but this will not change their beliefs in the least. This is something I understood by making this film and I respect peoples faith, this is something you cannot touch. I believe it is their right and as long as it helps them, everything is good, but a problem that the film tackles is what happens when this faith is manipulated. When this faith is used for commercial, financial and even political purposes, and when it becomes a rule imposed on others as well, some tenet one has to observe.”

Alexandru Solomon, a director and director of photography, is known for documentaries such as “The Great Communist Bank Robbery” (2004), “Cold Waves” (2007), “Kapitalism – Our Improved Formula” (2010), “Romania: Four Countries” (2015), and “Tarzans Testicles” (2017). Since 2010, Alexandru Solomon has been teaching at the National Arts University UNArte, and he is also the president of One World Romania Association. In 2016, he published a monograph entitled “Representations of Memory in Documentary Cinema.” (AMP)

14 October 2023
Europa Passage, a new documentary by Andrei Schwartz

Europa Passage, the latest documentary film directed by Andrei Schwartz, was screened at the One World Romania Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival, the 16th edition. Filmed over a period of six years, the documentary follows several Roma from Romania forced to commute between their homeland and the German city where they are trying to make a living. Andrei Schwartz was born in Bucharest and in 1973 he emigrated to Germany, where he attended the School of Arts in Hamburg. At the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival 1997, he won the Joris Ivens Award for Auf der Kippe / Wasteland, filmed in Cluj, a documentary about the daily life of the Roma, who live near the landfill site. In 2015, Andrei Schwartz made the documentary Himmelverbot/Outside, selected at the One World Romania Festival. The main character of the film, sentenced to life imprisonment for aggravated murder, is pardoned after 21 years in prison.

We spoke with Andrei Schwartz about his recent documentary, Europa Passage, and his concern to capture on film the stories of the marginalized people: As you may know, I made another film in 1997 about Pata-Rât, the garbage dump of the city of Cluj-Napoca. So, when I saw these Roma who arrived in Hamburg, I thought I was seeing those characters from the documentary made back then. I’m generally interested in looking at society from the edge, because if you have that perspective, you also understand what’s going on in the center. This recent documentary is not only a film about these people commuting between Romania and Hamburg, but also a portrait of Hamburg, obviously about the less beautiful side of the city. As I consider this city, Hamburg, my home, I was also interested in what the lesser-known side of it looks like. Returning to the interest in margins and marginalized people, I was born in Bucharest, near Balta Cocioc, a huge garbage dump, where there was a community of Roma who made a living by sorting garbage. I remember that as a child I used to pass by on the trolleybus on my way to school, but I never had the courage to enter the area to see what was going on there. I am concerned about the marginalized people also because, being Jewish, my relatives, who lived in Hungary, were exterminated in concentration camps, and extermination, unfortunately, is also part of the history of the Roma. When this film about the Roma, Auf der Kippe / Wasteland had its premiere, a film which won an award at the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, a kind of Cannes of documentary film, I was told that I had created a story about the human condition and about the life of the Roma. But I believe this is not only a film about the Roma and I am also referring to the recent documentary, Europa Passage, but also about some people who, under extremely difficult circumstances, are trying to preserve some normality. In Europa Passage the characters have an extraordinary sense of humor, which helps them not to give in and cease fighting. And this is great, you know. Țîrloi, one of the main characters in the documentary is always seeing the glass half full. I would like to have this degree of optimism myself.

The critic Victor Morozov describes the documentary as follows, quote: “Forced to live in ghettos, humiliated by being given only menial jobs and rejected by society, these people are pariahs, representing the dark side of an allegedly success story about the so-called integration into the “big European family. The film gives these people a presence and a name – Țîrloi, Maria and their relatives – taking them, at least temporarily, out of their sad anonymity. As a reminder always useful of the essential purpose of a documentary: to provide company, shelter and power to those in need. unquote

Director Andrei Schwartz has also referred to the feedback that he got after the premiere of Europa Passage: “It was interesting that the film reached nearly 25 German cities, where I attended the discussions. And eventually I realized the situation I was depicting in Europa Passage is not specific only to Hamburg; the Roma condition is similar in all the western cities and countries. What was impressive was the reaction of the people who saw the film, which was positive. And the attitude we have towards the beggars, an attitude which most of the time can create problems of consciousness, is not a specifically Romanian issue, neither is it a topic that concerns only mysef. From my point of view, those like my characters Țîrloi and Maria, are a symptom of a derailed society and I believe we cannot solve this situation unless we solve the other problems. However, the authorities could take some measures to improve the situation of these people.

Susanne Schuele is the director of photography of the film Europa Passage, Rune Schweitzer was in charge of editing, and Giacomo Goldbecker, Helge Haack, Marin Cazacu, Stefan Bück and Simon Bastian worked on the soundtrack of this film produced by Stefan Schubert. (LS, DB)

9 September 2023
“Occasional Spies,” a new documentary by Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu

The director, film producer and executive director of the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) Oana Giurgiu returns with a new documentary, after her 2015 Aliyah DaDa. Occasional spies is based on true facts and testimonies, and recreates the story of unusual espionage acts that had a decisive influence on how WWII unfolded: the story of ordinary people recruited from among young Zionists in Palestine, sent back to their home countries in Eastern Europe, including Romania, to get information on the Germans.

The documentary premiered in 2021 and won an honorary jury mention in the Romanian section of the 2021 Astra Film Festival in Sibiu. A guest of RRI, Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu said she had spent a lot of time researching, and that the story had a starting point in a scene from her first movie, Aliyah DaDa.

Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu: This is a story from WWII, more precisely the year 1944, a year with a lot of turmoil and unexpected changes, a year when the war seemed to be drawing to a close and solutions were being searched to find out the fate of the Allied prisoners of war in Eastern Europe. And at that point somebody in a secret service had this really bold and unusual idea, to recruit ordinary people and send them to Eastern Europe, because this mission could not have been accomplished by British or American spies, they would have been caught immediately. So this idea came up, to recruit spies from among the people who had managed to immigrate to Palestine before the war. In short, the plot of Occasional Spies is similar to a real-life version of Inglorious Basterds and I have to admit that Quentin Tarantino’s film was an inspiration for me. The story is fairly unknown in Romania and equally little known in the other countries where the events took place. Unfortunately, we are used to learning in schools about our local and national history, placed in a broader international context, but we are never told how certain political or military decisions affect the countries around us, our immediate neighbours.

In orderto retrace the story of the occasional spies, the director Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu resorted to a series of photos made by Alex Gâlmeanu. Letiţia Ștefănescu was in charge of editing, the sound design was entrusted to Sebastian Zsemlye, and the original score was written by Matei Stratan. The film was shot in Romania, Israel and Slovakia.

Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu: I am an occasional film director. It was the same with my first film, because I set out to tell many impressive, rich stories, which I felt deserved to be known. In this particular case, of documentaries concerning stories from the past, the problem is that the images provided by film archives, the only ones you have access to from the respective period, are rather scarce. Moreover, a war was going on, which means that the images one can use in a film of this kind are more often than not frontline footage and diaries kept by those involved. I was trying to illustrate the personal backgrounds of my characters, so I had to come up with a solution to bring these images to life, so I chose these series of photographs. It was a tremendous amount of work, which I would never do again. I have been working with the editor Letiția Ștefănescu for a long time now, and we usually share a lot of the work in a film, I cannot claim sole authorship. But with this film, I must mention all those who took part in making it. Alex Gâlmeanu, the author of the photographs, is an amazing artist, the original score was written by Matei Stratan and actually the entire soundtrack is a work of art in itself. Sebastian Zsemlye was in charge of the sound design. And I truly believe that Occasional Spies is a demonstration of what team work should be.

The cast of the film includes the actors Paul Ipate, Daniel Achim, Ioan Paraschiv, Mihai Niță, George Bîrsan, alongside many amateur actors. Istvan Teglas, Ionuț Grama and Radu Bânzaru also contributed voiceover for the characters. (AMP)

6 August 2022
#newTogether, a documentary produced by the Austrian Cultural Forum

During the lockdown introduced across Europe over the
COVID-19 pandemic, the Austrian Cultural Forum in Bucharest invited 60 artists
from Austria and Romania to reflect on their future in arts and on how their art
and communities may see themselves transformed during and after the health
crisis.

The videos they submitted were posted by the Austrian Cultural
Forum Bucharest on social networks. The success of the initiative prompted the
ACF Bucharest team to entrust the distinguished theatre and film director Carmen
Lidia Vidu with the production of a documentary using the video materials of
the participating artists. We talked to Andrei Popov, deputy director of the Austrian
Cultural Forum Bucharest and delegate producer of the documentary #newTogether,
about the birth of this project that he initiated jointly with the ACF
Bucharest director Thomas Kloiber:

Andrei Popov: The project took shape the moment the pandemic was
sweeping the world. It was then that myself and Thomas Kloiber, the head of the
ACF Bucharest, asked ourselves about the usefulness our work still had, about
the role of culture at a time when people have entirely different needs, some
of them immediate, if we think back at that period. And because we couldn’t
find a satisfactory answer to this question, which I continued to think about these
2 years, we tried to find out the opinions of the main beneficiaries of our
work, that is, the artists themselves. So we asked 30 artists in Austria and 30
artists in Romania how they lived the respective period, when as you recall we
were staying at home and had no solutions, nobody knew how to make progress in
their work or whether progress in that work still meant anything. We asked them
how they saw their own future, meaning both their personal lives and their
artistic careers, after the end of the pandemic. This is how this 2-month video
experiment was born. The artists recorded the videos during the lockdown and
sent them to us. All these clips were made in that exact period, and they can
still be viewed on the ACF’s Facebook page. At the end of this experiment, one
of the participating artists, Mihai Zgondoiu, asked us if we didn’t want to
make a film using this huge collection of several tens of hours of video
recordings.

This is how the documentary #newTogether came to
be. Chosen to direct it was Carmen Lidia Vidu, an artist awarded by GOPO and
UNITER, a strong feminist voice, an opinion leader who approaches social,
political, cultural and civic themes. #newTogether
is a form of dialogue while in isolation, a firsthand testimony. Our frailty,
vulnerability, fear became a universal language, which we all spoke in 2020, during
the Covid-19 pandemic, Carmen Lidia Vidu said about the project.

Gabriel Bebeșelea, Tudor Giurgiu, Ada Hausvater, Radu
Iacoban, Dan Lungu, Dan Perjovschi, Istvan Teglas, Alexandru Weinberger, Elena
Vlădăreanu, Gottlieb Wallisch, Elise Wilk, Franzobel are some of the artists
you can see in #newTogether. Andrei Popov, deputy head of the ACF Bucharest:

Andrei Popov: Carmen Lidia Vidu reorganised the material, selected
from the scores of hours of video the most relevant parts for the story and
direction we had agreed on with Cristina Baciu, who did the animation, the
soundtrack and the editing, and did an absolutely amazing job. Carmen Lidia
Vidu and Cristina Baciu made this film which is more than a documentary or a proof
of that moment that we all experienced. This 54-minute documentary is on the
one hand a sort of dictionary of the ideas and states that we all experienced
at the time, and on the other hand it is a reflection, or better yet, a double
reflection. It is a mirror for the artists who took part in the project and faced
the camera, and also a mirror reflecting our societies, whether we think of Romania,
Austria or any other country. Because essentially we all lived the same
experience, and one of the core merits of the film is that it highlights this. Moreover,
what the director Carmen Lidia Vidu set out to do was capture both the verbal
and the non-verbal, body language, which is why she selected fragments in which
the artists convey messages by both these means.

The documentary #newTogether has been already screened
at the Timişoara National Theatre, at the Classix Festiva in Iași, and between
March 1 and 15 it was available on the New York Segal Center Film Festival on Theater
and Performance platform. (A.M.P.)

16 July 2022
January 24, 2022

CELEBRATION
Today Romania celebrates 163 years since the Union of the Romanian
Principalities, the first major step in the formation of the Romanian nation
state, paving the way for the Great Union of 1918. On January 24, 1859,
Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected ruler of Wallachia, after on January 5 he had
become sovereign of Moldavia. His rule laid the foundations for modern Romania.
January 24 is a banking holiday in Romania. While many people chose to spend
the holiday in mountain resorts, the ones who stayed at home had the option of
attending military and religious ceremonies and celebratory concerts organised
around the country under COVID-19 restrictions. Bucharest’s Patriarchal
Cathedral hosted a service devoted to all those who contributed to the 1859 Union.
Politicians posted messages on this occasion. President Klaus Iohannis said the
Union on January 24, 1859 proves the importance of a project able to bring
together the energy of the Romanian nation, and urged people to work
persistently to consolidate the country’s current European and democratic path.
The Liberal PM Nicolae Ciucă pointed out that the Union was the result of the
untiring efforts of the politicians of the time, driven by the nation’s dream
of unity and of administrative, economic and social progress. This desire
endured with all the following generations, triggering major changes in the
Romanian society, Nicolae Ciucă added. In turn, the speaker of the Chamber of
Deputies and president of the Social Democratic Party Marcel Ciolacu said that,
163 years since the Union of the Romanian Principalities, what Romanians need
more than ever is unity and stability, if they are to handle current economic,
healthcare and security challenges.

COVID-19 Romanian authorities announced today 12,082 new cases of SARS-CoV-2
infections in 24 hours and 41 related deaths. The incidence rate in the capital
Bucharest is on the rise, reaching 10.23 cases per thousand people. The city
has been in the red tier since January 12, when the incidence rate went over 3
per thousand. The COVID-19 testing capacity is set to increase this week to
150,000 tests per day, as over 3,800 family physicians have signed contracts
with public health insurance agencies in this respect. In Bucharest and the
nearby county of Ilfov, where the largest number of cases is reported, testing
centres have already been opened in 20 hospitals. On Wednesday at the latest
COVID-19 testing will also be resumed in schools, after more than 10 million
test kits were received by school inspectorates. The health minister Alexandru
Rafila expects the current (5th) wave of the pandemic to reach its
peak in Romania in about 3 weeks’ time.

UKRAINE The European Union does not intend for the time being to follow in
the footsteps of the US and order the families of its diplomats to leave
Ukraine, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said today, according to
France Presse and Reuters. On Sunday night a senior US official justified the
decision saying that a Russian invasion may take place at any time. The US
secretary of state Antony Blinken is to address a meeting of the EU foreign
ministers in Brussels today, via video link, to update them on his recent talks
with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. Attending
the meeting in Brussels is the Romanian foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu. Russia has deployed around 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border,
which the West reads as a preparation for an attack designed to prevent Ukraine
from joining NATO.

DOCUMENTARY The French public TV channel France 3 tonight airs for the first
time a documentary on Marie of Romania, the amazing queen of the
Carpathians, as part of its highly popular history series Secrets
of history. The production of the documentary took one year and a half.
Archive photos and footage have been collected, along with testimonies by
historians and members of the Royal House of Romania. Scenes have been shot at
the Peleş and Bran castles in the southern Carpathians, at the Cotroceni
National Museum in Bucharest and at the Curtea de Argeş Monastery where Royal
House members have been buried. Queen Marie, the wife of King Ferdinand I, was
acknowledged in Europe as an ambassador of the Romanian nation and a supporter
of the Romanian nation state.

TENNIS The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep lost to Alizé Cornet
of France, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, in the round of 16 of the Australian Open in
Melbourne today. For Halep (15 WTA) this was the first defeat after a string of
8 consecutive wins. Also today, Sorana Cîrstea of Romania takes on seed no. 7 Iga
Swiatek of Poland, in the same competition round. (A.M.P.)

24 January 2022
Award-winning Romanian documentaries in late 2021

You are Ceausescu to Me is a documentary film directed by Sebastian Mihailescu. In late 2021, the production scooped two notable awards, the Best Central and East European Documentary and the Best Photography Award. The latter distinction went to the films director of photography, Barbu Balasoiu. The distinctions were awarded as part of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. Sebastian Mihailescus documentary also scooped the New Talent Award as part of the DocLisboa festival.

The Best Central and East European Documentary Award went to Sebastian Mihailescus film because, according to the judging panel, the film succeeded to recreate, in a playful manner, Romanian history through the method of reconstruction, at once analysing the characters of the reconstruction in a narrative based on self-reflection. You are Ceausescu to me is an experimental mix of a documentary and a feature film which seeks to find the motivation underlying the actions of young Nicolae Ceausescu, the last Romanian dictator, the head of state for then the Socialist Republic of Romania from 1967 to the collapse of the communist regime on December 22nd, 1989. In Sebastian Mihailescus experimental film, youngsters aged between 15 and 22, coming from various walks of life, take part in auditions for the part of young Nicolae Ceausescu, in the 1930s. Pictures are taken of the teenagers as if they were part of archive photographs, turning into fiction a series of official documentaries and taking mutual action. They relate to Nicolae Ceausescu just as if they related to a fictional character, with no preconceptions, appropriating his personality traits according to their passion, via the clichés of commercial cinematography.

The director of You are Ceausescu to me, Sebastian Mihailescu, speaks about his own experimental documentary film.

“Let me just tell you that the character of my documentary does not have that much to do with the historical character Nicolae Ceausescu. The real Nicolae Ceausescu served as a pretext for me, in that I opted for using a character which is at once a caricature and an iconic character, it is iconic in much the same way as, lets say, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong was, as a result of Andy Warhols portraits, a character whom today everybody is willing to share their views on, even though those people dont know that much about him or they havent lived during the communist regime. I kind of struck it lucky because, as I was working with a historian, I had access to young Nicolae Ceausescus personal file, a file that was kept by then the Homeland Security, Siguranta Statului, the intelligence service that was operational in Romania under that name until November 13, 1940. When the idea crossed my mind to make the film, I was not familiar with that file. I thought I would make a film about Nicolae Ceausescu, and I would present him as an iconic character, as Ive said before, a character all of us pretend we know but whom we dont know that much, actually. I was wondering who might play his part and I was unable to clearly figure out who that particular actor might be for the role. So the idea crossed my mind, that of a collective portrait, and I picked up that part of Ceausescus life before 1945, that particular timeframe when he was an underground communist fighter and he did time in prison, since that period of time seemed more offering to me. I thought that period of time was more generous for my film, all the more so as there are no archive films where the young Ceausescu could be found, back then he was not as important as he would be later. The challenge was for me to recreate or create a series of shots that did not exist, and launch the question whether, in a film starting off from that idea, an inkling of truth could be found. So I thought that, for the casting sessions I would held so that I could pick those actors with the same age as that of then the young Ceausescu, I might stand a chance to get closer to the truth. And that is how I held my casting, I was looking for youngsters coming from various walks of life, educated, less educated, school dropouts just like Ceausescu himself used to be, a school dropout after the first four primary-school grades, but also people who furthered their education. Through that casting I checked whether my attempt to find the young Ceausescu would be successful, also trying to detect what the seeds might be, of the future dictator, the seeds of evil, that is, to discover how and when a man changes, or what lies behind a man who was so controversial.”

The film cast and crew includes professional as well as amateur actors such as Denis Duma, Dan Hudici, Ionuț Amador Motoi, Mario Sandrino Rădulescu, Mihai Topalov, Cristiana-Alexandra Gheorghe, Cristina Parancea, Alin Ilie Grigore, Zhang Florin-Zhiyuan. Claudiu Mitcu, Ioachim Stroe and Robert Fița are the producers of the film. The documentary is produced by Wearebasca, with the support of the National Center of Cinematography jointly with the Romanian Television Corporation. Born in 1983, Sebastian Mihăilescu earned his BA from the I.L.Caragiale National Drama and Film University in Bucharest, class of 2013. His graduation production is a short-reel film titled Old, Luxurious Flat, located in an Ultra-Central, Desirable Neighborhood. Sebastian Mihailescu & Andrei Epure wrote the screenplay. HiFilm are the producers. The film was premiered as part of the International Locarno Film Festival, in 2016, in the Pardi di Domani Competition section.

(Translation by Eugen Nasta)

8 January 2022
Up-and-coming Romanian-born filmmakers scooping awards in Cannes

La
civil, the film directed by Teodora Ana Mihai, scooped the Prix de l’Audace (Prize
for courage) award as part of the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film
Festival, held over July 5 and 17, 2021. This year, the festival’s Un certain
Regard section returned to its original mission and format, that of presenting
the young and the research cinematography. Or at least that is what the general
delegate of the festival, Thierry Frémaux, said, when he announced the section.
La Civil will be distributed by Voodoo Films in Romania. Its premiere is scheduled
sometime this fall, as part of the 12th edition of Les Films de
Cannes à Bucarest Festival, to be held over October 22 and 31st. La
Civil is a Belgium-Mexico-Romania production, involving Menuetto Film in
Belgium and enjoying the support of Eurimages. La Civil has been highly recommended
by several well-established filmmakers, such as The Dardenne Brothers known for
their film production company Films du Fleuve in Belgium or Michel Franco of
Mexico, the director of The Theorem. The director of photography is Marius
Panduru, known among other things, for Policeman, Adjective, Closer to the
Moon, Aferim! and If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle .

La
civil is Teodora Ana Mihai’s first feature film. Teodora was born in
Bucharest, in 1981. In 1989 Teodora Ana Mihai relocated to Belgium, together
with her parents. When she was in high school in San Francisco, California
Teodora discovered her passion for cinematography. She pursued a study
programme with the Film Academy in New York. She began working as a screenplay
writer in Belgium, then she was assistant director. La Civil tells the story
of Cielo, a Mexican mother who is searching for her daughter who was kidnaped
by the members of a drug cartel. The authorities fail to help her so Cielo
decides to go on her own completely. Gradually, Cielo turns from a house wife
into a vengeful activist. La Civil is based on true facts. The film is the outcome
of many years of research Teodora Ana Mihai did jointly with Mexican writer Habacuc
Antonio de Rosario. Initially, when she began her research, Teodora Ana Mihai had
set for herself the task of making a documentary.

Teodora Ana Mihai:

I have been familiar with Mexico ever since I was a child, and the Mexico
I used to know back then was completely different from today’s country. You
were quite safe as you were driving your car, you could go places you were safe
as a tourist as well. Since 2006, when president Felipe Calderón declared war on
drugs, more than 60.000 people went missing, and that political decision had
and still has a strong impact. As I’ve said before, there were a couple of
regions left where you could go as a tourist, there were places where you got
greater safety, but mainly in the northern regions, close to the US border, you
could be in trouble. And as we speak, such a situation is spread rather widely
across several Mexican states. That is exactly why we picked such a topic,
because there is an impending need for a debate on the present situation in
Mexico. It is in no way okay to get out of your house in the morning, going to
work or to school, and go missing, with nobody knowing what happened. I
wondered what it was like to be an adolescent against such a backdrop, what it
was like to be a parent, what it means to live in an insecure society.
Initially, in 2015, when, jointly with Habacuc Antonio de Rosario, I began my
documentation, the idea was for us to speak with as many families as possible,
of the victims of drug cartels. It took us two and a half years to speak with
very many people tackling that scourge, in the event of making a documentary.
We eventually gave up on that idea, as our documentary would have presented
illegal circumstances, sensitive statements, and we did not want to jeopardize
anybody.

Teodora
Ana Mihai and Habacuc Antonio de Rosario gave up on the idea of making a
documentary film altogether. Instead, they decided to tell the story of Miriam
Rodríguez Martínez, a woman who was shot dead right in front of her house after
she found her daughter’s kidnappers and murderers.

Teodora Ana Mihai:

During
the investigation, I met Miriam Rodríguez Martínez, about whom much has been
written as of late, there even was an article in the New York Times, about her activity,
but that occurred four years after she died, unfortunately. We had the chance
to meet her and talk to her, that is how the film’s main character was born,
Cielo, the mother of the girl who was seized and murdered by a drug cartel. After
several failed attempts to find help from the authorities, she tried to do
things all by herself, she went on her own completely. As I was saying, we did
lots of interviews, and my idea, initially, was to write the story from a
teenager boy or a teenager girl’s point of view, but I met Miriam Rodríguez
Martínez, who had found out we were doing our investigation in the region, on
the issue, and told us what happened to her.
Her story prompted me to make my decision, the view point in our film
will be a mother’s viewpoint. The film, in fact, is also a tribute we paid to
her and to all the families who told us what happened to them. Unfortunately,
we heard lots of strong and tragical stories about that.

The
Flanders Audiovisual Fund was the main financier of La Civil. The production
also enjoyed the joint support of Belgium’s Cinematography and Audiovisual
Centre, Romania’s national Cinematography Centre and Eurimages, European
Cinema Support Fund. The filming took place over November and December 2020 in Durango,
Mexico, at the time of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was ongoing.

(Translation by Eugen Nasta)

11 September 2021
Anybody home?

He studied documentary photography in London. Upon his
return to Romania, he was set to rediscover the world he left behind using the
camera, whether he was taking pictures or filming. This is the trigger point for
the Working Site in the time of the pandemic, a project that took off thanks
to the fortnightly lockdown Ionut Teoredascu had been under, in his flat in an
apartment house. Ionut immortalized construction works for the neighboring
block of flats. Then the Pandemic in the countryside followed, it was another
project consisting of snapshots of village life which had remained unchanged,
save for the ear-loop mask people living there had to wear. But what compelled
our attention as regards Ionut Teoderascu was a project for which Ionut
Teoderascu scooped the golden award in the People/Family category as part of
the 2020 Budapest International Photo Awards, titled Nobody’s home.

Ionuţ Teoderascu introduced himself as a documentary photographer.
He told us how the project took off.

Ionut Teoderascu:

The short-reel documentary titled
There’s nobody home was released in April 2019. So it was then that my idea
took shape. I called in at my grandmother’s house. It had been uninhabited in
the last ten years and it was more like a curiosity for me, to take a look
inside. Once I entered the house, I noticed all my grandmother’s stuff was
there, things were almost untouched. It was like a capsule of time. Then I
returned there with my father, since I asked him to tell the story of their childhood,
what parents had been like when they were still alive, since I, for one, did
not meet the grandpa on my father’s side, he died at the age of 44. Then I got
back again, this time with my aunties, I asked them to tell me more and that’s
how I discovered a part of my grandmother’s past and I said to myself the best
thing is to tell the whole story in a documentary short-reel, so that I may
blend the image with the sounds of the house as I made recordings when I went,
with my parents or my aunties, to my grandmother’s house. I made the
documentary short-reel late last year.

The film was received better than he expected. Or at
least that is what Ionut Teoderascu told us.

The first time I launched it in Romania it was part of a Takeover, it was posted on the Instagram page of the magazine titled
It is only a magazine and it was there that I laid out the story for the
first time ever, but it had been released in Great Britain before, it was
posted on a platform dedicated to documentary photography. It was launched
there. With this project, I also participated in a competition before the year
ended; a photo album featuring students was posted there, one of the first
albums Canon has made, and it was there that the project took off, then I
participated in a contest in Budapest where I won the Gold Vibe, the golden
award, with this project. Subsequently it was also posted on other channels,
here, in Romania.

Ionut Teoderascu taking
us through the story of the film.

The sensation you get is that you’re
stepping in another time. As soon as you step into the house, you feel those
images that affect you a lot, emotionally, you see crumbling walls or
spiderwebs, very big. It is that kind of image you wouldn’t want to see,
especially if you have a personal connection to the family who lived there yet
it is an area where the history of a family has been very well-preserved, since
the place we live in, after all defines us and the whole time granny lived
there, she used to live there on a permanent basis for the last 20 years, she
collected all the things she needed, she arranged them, she somehow got ready
for her death as well, she had prepared everything for that already. And you
could see they were still there. I found pills, I found letters granny had kept
there. And all that stuff speaks volumes about the person who used to live there.

The film takes us to the village of Craiesti, Galati
county, the village of the filmmaker’s childhood, where we’re about to visit a
special house.

Ionut Teoderascu:

The house is atypical for that area,
where the houses are sort of smaller, there are two-room houses, but the
granny’s house does have a history of its own. It was purpose-built, it was supposed to house the administration, the
prefecture or the town hall and was afterwards sold to my grandfather. It has
tall doors, the materials are very good, they are made of solid wood and was
built on top of a hill, the view of the village is very picturesque it is old
enough, it is a hundred years old, or sort of.

Ionut Teoderascu once again, this time
extending an invitation to all of us.

I encourage everybody to watch the
documentary short-reel, you can access it on my website, at teoderascu.com
or on YouTube or on the Facebook page as I think this documentary somehow tells
the story of several families, guiding us as to how we should look at a
family’s past, in a bid to get everybody understanding the idea that a family’s
past is here and there and it is romanticized by those who are still alive.
Because we want to know that our parents lived a good life. And, perhaps, that
is exactly why, after they die, we try to reconstruct the past, rendering it
more romanticized. And that’s what I speak about in my documentary short-reel,
apart from the whole story about my grandparents that I tell there.

For those who are interested, in Zalau, the
photographs made by Ionut Teoderascu are brought together in the exhibition
titled the The faces of the pandemic.

16 February 2021
New international recognition for “colectiv”

In Rolling Stone magazines top 20 films of this year, the Romanian Alexander Nanaus documentary “colectiv is ranking first. It looks at the tragedy of October 30, 2015, when a fire broke out during a concert held in a rock club operating in a decommissioned plant in Bucharest. 64 people died, 27 of them on the spot, and around 200 were injured, one of whom committed suicide later on. Some of the injured were flown abroad for medical care, others, who stayed in the country, died because of the burns and of in-hospital infections.

Following journalists, victims and governmental officials, Alexander Nanaus documentary talks about the awakening of civic engagement and the need for non-partisan journalism in a democratic world.

The British The Economist, and the American Vanity Fair are some of the publications that do not conceal their admiration for this documentary: The Economist calls it a “remarkable film, Vanity Fair describes it as “shattering.

After the awards won at international film festivals in Brazil, the US, Belgium, Israel, Switzerland and Luxembourg, last weekend the documentary won the European Film Academys award for best documentary.

“colectiv is the first Romanian documentary to win this competition of the European Film Academy, an institution founded in 1988 and bringing together over 3,800 European filmmakers. This prompted director Alexander Nanau to say that this is particularly a sign of recognition of the importance of journalism in society, of courage on the part of whistle-blowers and of citizens rights to be respected and protected by their politicians.

“colectiv is also nominated, alongside 2 other films (‘Another Round’ and ‘Corpus Cristi’), for the Lux European Audience Award. The winner will be announced on April 28, 2021 in a European Parliament session, and will be based on the votes of the audience and of the MEPs, each weighing 50% in the decision.

We should also mention that “colectiv by Alexander Nanau is Romanias contribution to next years Oscars for best international feature, previously known as the best foreign film. (tr. A.M. Popescu)

14 December 2020
‘Colectiv’ in the race for the Oscar Awards

A film about the system versus the people, about truth versus manipulation, about personal interest versus public interest, about individual courage and responsibility: this is how one would describe the feature film ‘Colectiv’, which shows what happened in the first year after the fire at the Colectiv club in Bucharest. Colectiv is not a fiction film or one inspired from real life, it is the stark reality! On October 30, 2015, in the evening, the rock band ‘Goodbye to Gravity’ went on stage for a concert at the Colectiv club in Bucharest, which had been improvised in an abandoned factory. The concert was attended by hundreds of young people.

Shortly after the concert began, the fireworks display included in the show set on fire the sponge that cushioned the improvised concert hall, which had only one exit. The fire lasted 153 seconds, enough to cause the death of some of the spectators, the choking on smoke of others and a stampede for the exit. The country’s PM at the moment resigned, just as the mayor of the Bucharest sector where the club was located. Meanwhile, some of the injured people were transported abroad for medical care, others, who remained in the country, died because of their severe burns and the nosocomial infections.

People took to the streets to protest against corruption chanting the famous slogan ‘Corruption kills’. The authorities opened a criminal file, some people were arrested, the trial was protracted, but eventually the culprits were found, punishments were ruled and damages were granted to the victims and their families. One of the biggest tragedies, in times of peace, in the Romanian history, the Colectiv fire has killed 64 people, mostly young people, and has wounded about 200 people, of whom one subsequently committed suicide.

Directed by Alexander Nanau, the documentary, born out of the 2015 Colectiv fire tragedy, is Romania’s proposal for the 2021 Oscar Awards, in the ‘best international feature film’ section. This is the first time when Romania proposes a documentary film for the Oscar Awards, shows the film’s Facebook page. Moreover, the American distributors will also register ‘Colectiv’ in the ‘best documentary film’ section to increase its chances to be included on the short list of nominees. Director Alexander Nanau says that ‘we are in a genuine golden age of documentary films, and the fact that these films are starting to be so widely acknowledged is really encouraging’. Alexander Nanau is convinced that the story ‘Colectiv’ will reach very many people. (tr. L. Simion)

16 October 2020
Acasă, My Home, the debut documentary by director Radu Ciorniciuc

Screened
in the World Cinema Documentary section of the 42nd edition of
Sundance, the largest independent film festival in the United States, Acasă, My Home won the festival’s World
Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography. The jury praised the
film for the fluidity and tenacity of the camerawork. Radu Ciorniciuc and
Mircea Topoleanu were responsible for the film’s cinematography. The film was
due to open the 13th edition of the One World Romania documentary
film festival, but the entire event was postponed due to the coronavirus
outbreak.

Acasă, My Home is about the Enache family, who
lived amid the wilderness of the Văcărești Delta, an abandoned water reservoir
in Bucharest that in time was taken over by vegetation and became a home to
hundreds of species of animals and rare plants. The family lived in a shack in
the middle of this incredible ecosystem for almost twenty years until the land
was awarded protected area status and renamed the Văcărești Nature Park,
thereby becoming first the urban nature park in the country. The film’s
director Radu Ciorniciuc followed the Enache family for four years, documenting
their life both before they were evicted from the delta and after, when they
made the transition from a life lived in perfect harmony with nature to one in
which they had to navigate the challenges of city life.

A
journalist by trade, Ciorniciuc is one of the founders of Casa Jurnalistului
(The Journalist’s House), a Bucharest-based collective for independent
reporters; has written for The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Channel 4 News and ZDF;
and has won many local and international awards, including from the Royal
Television Society and Amnesty International UK in 2014 and the Harold Wincott
Award for Business Economic and Financial Journalism in 2016. We asked him how
he made the transition from journalism to documentary film making:

The
transition was relatively natural in my case, because in the reports I used to
make for The Journalist’s House I would always try to delve deeper into my
subjects and take a more documentary approach. In Acasă, My Home, I realised I couldn’t possibly tell the family’s
story using only the limited tools of journalism. So, that’s when I began
looking for different ways to tell their story and to tell it in a manner that
was as close as possible to how I saw it in my mind. The four years I spent
working on Acasă, My Home was like
going to film school for me, I took part in many workshops around Europe, where
I met professionals from whom I learnt a great deal. It all came out of a need
to tell this story in a more profound and complex way than I would have been able
to do in a reportage piece.

Acasă, My Home was one of the most popular films
among the public at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, with its heart-breaking
portrayal of the youngest members of the Enache family and the challenges they
face at an age at which most other children are more interested in tablets and
smartphones. Director Radu Ciorniciuc:

Acasă, My Home could be described as a family
drama. It tells the story of this family over the course of four years. I
followed them for two years while they lived in the Văcăreşti Delta and for
almost two more years after they were resettled in the city, during the process
of their social integration. The film is made in collaboration with Lina Vdovîi,
who co-wrote the script, and Mircea Topoleanu. None of us had any experience of
filmmaking, but we managed to work together, and at some point we were joined
by a film producer with more experience in this field. In any case, because we
are journalists and have access to channels that allowed us to stay in
permanent contact with the public, the project enjoyed a certain visibility. We
also tried to consolidate the social project we initiated and which was aimed
at making the transition to city living less traumatising for both the children
and their parents, and we got a lot of help in this endeavour from the public. It
was with this support that we were able to launch the multimedia project called
Acasă consisting of a photo album with
pictures taken by the children themselves during their first year of
transition, when they documented their departure from the delta all the way
through to the end of their first year in school. They had never been to school
before that.

The
team who worked on the film also launched a social project involving various
specialists and humanitarian organisations. The eleven members of the Enache family
had been living a life cut off from society, with no ID papers and no access to
education and healthcare. Now, all nine children have IDs, go to school and get
regular medical check-ups, and the adults have jobs. Radu Ciorniciuc:

There
were a number of contradictory things that drove me to make this film. Despite
their obviously precarious social condition, I was fascinated by the strong
family feeling they had and how they cared for one another. Coming to this film
project after living abroad for some years, a period in which I worked really
intensely, almost to the point of burnout, I was all the more fascinated by
these people. This is partly what kept me involved with this subject, the way these
people related to each other, despite their precarious material situation. It
wasn’t new to me, just something I’d forgotten about. I lived on my own from
when I was quite young and I had somehow forgotten what it’s like to live with
your brothers and sisters and for your parents to take care of you. This is
what drove me to want to do more for them than just produce a reportage. And,
in a way, this film made me less afraid of love and vulnerability. (Tr. CM)

11 April 2020
Stories from the heart of Transylvania

Todays installment takes us to a part of Transylvania usually known as the Hills of Transylvania, and its protagonists are a man with a passion for photography and lots of tourists who have come to discover the beauty of this country.

In the triangle formed by the cities of Sibiu, Fagaras and Sighisoara, there lies the second-largest protected area in Romania, the Hartibaci Valley, also known as the Hills of Transylvania. “This is a place where you can come as a visitor, and stay for the rest of your life, is the motto of a documentary based precisely on these coordinates: a place, a photographer and many visitors. Some of them have come here so often, that eventually they have decided to stay and enjoy their new home. Photographer and videographer Mihai Moiceanu, who produced the documentary, tells us more:

Mihai Moceanu “My film tells the story of a family from Germany, who have worked in various multinational corporations and first visited Romania 15 years ago. Because they were passionate photographers, I was their guide on several photography tours. They were attracted to these places, bought an old property, built a lovely boarding house and settled there. And they have lived here ever since.

The project is the outcome of one of the campaigns that he ran last year jointly with the Romanian Eco-Tourism Association and the Partnership Foundation, with a view to promoting ecotourism destinations in Romania, Mihai Moceanu also told us. But why, we asked, did he choose the Hills of Transylvania as the topic of his documentary?

Mihai Moceanu One of Transylvania’s advantages is that it still has a rural life with hundreds of years of tradition. The region boasts less known but very interesting monuments that are valuable and spectacular in terms of architecture, it is home to very interesting rural communities that have preserved the old traditions, communities where tourists can spend an active holiday. Alongside visits to tourist objectives they can also experience life at the countryside, see how the locals live, what a traditional household looks like and enjoy the traditional food which is very tasty and organic.

A region of pasture, meadows and coniferous trees, famous for its biodiversity, traditional farming and crafts and also for its cultural landscape, unchanged since medieval times, Transylvania’s Hills are waiting to be discovered in spring. Alongside its fortified churches, the region boasts stone churches erected in the early 19 century, painted by members of the Grecu family, famous across the entire region for their personal, moralizing way in which they interpreted the biblical scenes they painted. Mihai Moceanu also told us about the characters of the story that he presented in his documentary:

Mihai Moceanu I have been organizing, for many years, photo tours in Romania, for amateur and professional photographers, during which we discover various places across the country, in terms of landscape, traditions and people. They first came on one of these tours, then came again and we became friends. The film came from a completely different direction, from the Association of Ecotourism in Romania, which wanted to promote ecotourism areas in the country. Since Transylvania’s Hills is such a destination, I came up with the idea of making a film centered around the story of this family. It turned out to be a very interesting story, appreciated by the public.

The film Transylvania‘s Hills, Transylvania’s Heart, directed by Mihai Moceanu, is popular due to the simplicity of life that it presents:

Mihai Moceanu Most tourists who come to Romania are not interested in extraordinary landscapes, such as the Alps for instance, but in the communion between man and nature, as here nature blends beautifully with folk tradition and the people’s way of life. This is what impresses them. There is also the fact that old traditions are still well preserved and the fact that here they can find a civilization that has disappeared in Western Europe some 50 or 70 years ago.

This is a film that we invite you to see, because film and photography give you another kind of access to peoples intimate space, which is captured on camera.

(translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu, Elena Enache)

24 March 2020
January 25, 2020

PARLIAMENT The 2 chambers of Romanias Parliament will convene on January 28 for a special session focusing on a bill scrapping the so-called special pensions paid to magistrates, which are not based on the principle of previous contributions. The Judicial Inspection Division says the bill tramples on the principles of judge independence and immovability, and comes against provisions in the Constitution and regulations by the European Court for Human Rights. On January 29, Parliament also convenes in a joint session to discuss the bill reintroducing the 2-round voting system in local elections, for which the Government takes responsibility before Parliament. The Orban Cabinet says the bill is intended to strengthen democratic standards at local community level. President Klaus Iohannis had previously requested a special Parliamentary session to this end. The Social Democrats, in opposition, reiterated that jointly with the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, they will table a no-confidence motion against the Liberal Government.

HOLOCAUST The Romanian PM Ludovic Orban takes part on Monday in an official ceremony celebrating 75 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, organised by the Polish authorities on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. According to a news release issued on Saturday by the Romanian Government, officials from several countries, Holocaust survivors and members of Jewish associations will be attending the ceremony, held under the patronage of the president of Poland Andrzej Duda. The Government of Romania, the release also reads, reconfirms its pledge to carry on Holocaust education and research efforts, to commemorate the Holocaust victims and to take responsibility for the countrys history.

IMMIGRANTS Romanian border police caught 9 citizens of Egypt, Iraq and Somalia attempting to cross the border into Hungary illegally, with the help of 2 Romanian citizens, the Romanian Border Police announced on Saturday. The investigations revealed that the 7 men and 2 women, aged between 21 and 52, had applied for asylum in Romania. They are currently probed into for attempted illegal border crossing, while the Romanian citizens are facing human trafficking charges.

CORONAVIRUS China has today announced extending the lockdown introduced in order to contain the newly discovered coronavirus, initially identified in Wuhan. Five cities in Hubei, a province in central China, have been added to the 13 where all bus, underground and ferry services have been suspended, and all outbound planes and trains cancelled. The Chinese army has sent medical teams to the outbreak region, after the death toll has reached 41, out of a total of over 1,300 cases. The virus has reached Europe as well, with 2 cases confirmed in France. The World Health Organisation has decided not to class the virus as an international emergency.

EARTHQUAKE At least 21 people died, more than 1,000 were injured and several buildings collapsed in a major earthquake that hit eastern Turkey on Friday night, Turkish authorities have announced. The 6.8 magnitude quake was followed by scores of aftershocks. The earthquake, centred 550 km east of the capital city Ankara, in Elazig province, was also felt in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Turkey is frequently affected by major tremors. In 1999, 17,000 people died and half a million lost their homes in a 7.6 earthquake in the north-west of the country, while another one hit the eastern province of Van in 2011, killing more than 500.

FILM “Home, Romanian director Radu Ciorniciucs first film, premieres on Sunday in the international documentary competition of the most important American independent film festival, Sundance. “Home is the first Romanian documentary selected into this festivals competition, next to 11 other documentaries from around the world, in the World Cinema Documentary category. The film documents the life of a family who lived for 20 years in the Văcărești Delta, up until the place was declared a protected area and was renamed Văcărești Nature Park, the first urban nature park in Romania. Another Romanian film, Colectiv, by Alexander Nanau, will be screened in the festivals Spotlight section. This is a documentary on the events taking place in the first year after the fire in the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest, in which 64 young people died.

TENNIS The Romanian player Simona Halep, number 3 in the world, has moved up into the 4th round of the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the year, after defeating the Kazakh Iulia Putintseva (38 WTA) 6-1, 6-4, on Saturday in Melbourne. On Sunday Halep is to take on Belgian Elise Mertens (17 WTA), who beat CiCi (Catherine) Bellis (600 WTA) 6-1, 6-7, 6-0 in the 3rd round. Last year in Melbourne Halep lost in the 4th round, and in 2018 she reached the Australian Open final. Also on Saturday Monica Niculescu (Romania) / Misaki Doi (Japan) moved up into the next round of the doubles tournament, having defeated the Japanese Nao Hibino/Makoto Ninomiya 6-2, 7-5. Niculescu and Doi are to play next against Hao-ching Chan and Latisha Chan (Taiwan).

(translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

25 January 2020