Radio România Internațional

Tag: feature

  • Nightpractice, the recipient of the Best Romanian short film Award as part of the ANONIMUL 2023

    Nightpractice, the recipient of the Best Romanian short film Award as part of the ANONIMUL 2023

    The Audience award for the Best Short film as part of
    the ANONIMUL 2023 International Independent Film Festival went to Nightpractice,
    a production by Bogdan Alecsandru. Initially, more than 100 films were entered the
    short film competition. For the final competition, film critic Ionut Mares selected
    12 productions, most of which being signed by well-established names in the
    Romanian filmmaking industry. The production by Bogdan Alecsandru was also shortlisted
    for the Romanian Film Days competition as part of TIFF (Transylvania International
    Film Festival) with the selection including some of the best Romanian recent
    films.


    Bogdan Alecsandru has recently earned his Master’s in Film
    directing with the I.L Caragiale National Film and Drama University in Bucharest.
    He participated for the second time around in the Anonimul’s short film
    competition. In 2022 he was in Sfântu Gheorghe, the locality hosting the
    festival each year, with his first short film, Our House.


    We sat down and spoke
    to Bogdan Alecsandru about the topic of his film and about the reactions of the
    audience of Anonimul.


    I have
    taken part in Anonimul for the 2nd year in a row, in the short film
    competition, and it is also the 2nd year when the festival as such
    is very special and very specific. I met people who booked their tickets months
    in advance, so they can take part in the festival, whose venue we all know is in
    a rather isolated place. There isn’t very much to do in Sfântu Gheorghe and it
    is extraordinary, people gathering there to watch movies, hence the very special
    atmosphere. I also turned up with my film and I was so happy I got there. For
    me, it is very important to get in touch with the audience we have, a very
    special and extremely dedicated audience. Actually, this award, the audience’s
    award goes to the young filmmakers through voting, physically, as well as
    online, and, for me, that is a formative experience, I daresay. As part of the
    festival, every short
    film enjoys two screenings. One of them also has a Q & A section and that is
    actually the only time when you sit before your audience and have a direct
    interaction with them. The reactions seemed quite enthusiastic, to me, and I
    was happy about it as I wanted to make a short film meant to be quite audience-friendly,
    with horror- like elements, even with thriller elements, I daresay, in the most
    common acceptance of the word. That is why I expected my film to enjoy
    appreciation, yet I did not expect this award. Because, even if it is rather a pop
    film, rather audience-oriented, it has nonetheless a quite sensitive topic, for
    Romania, the relation between two people of the same sex.


    Bogdan Alecsandru expressed
    his interest mainly in queer cinema, which in Romania can still be viewed as
    some sort of niche cinema. Besides, he takes his time to make his debut with a
    feature film as, for the time being, he is passionate about the short genre which
    he considers he did not explore enough.


    In Romania,
    queer cinema is rather scarcely represented, we’re speaking about films telling
    stories focusing on same-sex relations. Notwithstanding, this kind of cinema had
    been tackled before, yet the first Romanian queer film had a tardier release,
    in 2006, when Tudor Giurgiu made Love Sick. I believe there are very many
    stories of this kind, untold, or which did not enjoy the opportunity of being
    told, until recently, and I am interested to make the topic known to the audiences,
    to that effect. Right now I am interested in this area of the short film, which
    can definitely be viewed as an exercise or as some sort of practice. Yet I view the short film as a
    genre n itself, a very precious one, so in the coming years, at least, I intend
    to explore its specificity. Which means I avoid making short films that rather look
    like a beginning or a demo for a feature film. And that, for the time being, at
    least. Later on, I do not know what I will do as I am still quite young and I
    change my focus rather fast. Now, speaking about Romanian cinema, it seems to
    be it has seen auspicious moments for some time now and, when at Anonimul, I
    was really happy to find myself included in a selection mostly made of women
    filmmakers. Many of those women filmmakers are friends of mine and I am happy
    for their career. I also find it a good thing, the fact that commercial films
    are on the rise, the fact that this is a growing phenomenon. What I have in mind
    are such films as Teambuilding, whose box office in theatres was rather high, which
    doesn’t happen very often in the case of Romanian movies. I find that a good
    thing also because this genre could change Romanians’ perspective on Romanian
    cinema a little bit, but, obviously, that
    is a good thing also from a commercial perspective. I think a functional
    filmmaking industry should have both film genres, the art and the commercial
    films .


    On the cast for Nightpractice
    are Andrei Giurgea, Tiberius Zavelea, Gabriel Spahiu, Marc Titieni, Rareș
    Ularu, Horațiu Băcilă, Vlad Tudoran, Robi Brage, Antonio-Daniel Petrica.











  • “Otto the Barbarian”, the best Romanian feature film in TIFF, now in theaters

    “Otto the Barbarian”, the best Romanian feature film in TIFF, now in theaters


    Otto the Barbarian, filmmaker Ruxandra Ghitescu’s
    debut feature film, is in theaters across Romania as of September 24. Otto the
    Barbarian saw its world premiere in the official competition as part of the
    Sarajevo International Film Festival’s 26th edition, and it was
    selected as the best feature film in the TIFF Transylvania International Film Festival’s
    section Romanian Film Days.


    The plot revolves around a 17-year-old punk teenager
    who grapples with the death of his girlfriend. The boy ends up captive in a
    vicious circle created by his parents, his grandfather, his former lover’s
    mother and the investigation carried out by the social services. In order to survive,
    Otto will have to confront his feelings and his guilt.


    According to the film critic Victor Morozov, Otto is
    the most engaging Romanian film character in recent years, all the more so as
    he is guided by Ruxandra Ghitescu’s lenient gaze, which is everything a film character
    may wish for, when in a tight corner. As for Ruxandra Ghitescu, she hopes for Otto
    the Barbarian to be a film that will reward us all emotionally.


    The film started off from an article she came across a
    couple of years ago and which focused on Octavian Albu, the film’s musical
    director and the author of the original movie soundtrack, jointly with Cardinal
    rock group. With details on that, here is Ruxandra Ghitescu herself.


    Ruxandra Ghitescu: Yes, well, I was trying to find a
    contact point with adolescence, and I came across an article about Octavian Albu,
    who had been nicknamed Otto the Barbarian and to me, this encounter seemed a
    very fortunate one. As the frontman of a punk-rock group, with the entire
    outward architecture of punk culture, it seemed to me that Octavian embodied
    the marginality of an age that is pretty much ignored in social interaction, in
    film and also in literature. Octavian Albu was, from the very beginning, the
    adviser for the soundtrack, he joined our team as a musical director, he and
    Cardinal group wrote most of the soundtrack, and together we picked up the
    songs on the soundtrack that belonged to other punk groups. I can say that, of
    the article that inspired the plot, only the name, the hairstyle and the jacket
    survived. It is a fictionalisation with no connection whatsoever with Octavian’s
    life. In fact, we two met a couple of years after I had found the article, when
    Otto was 23 already and a student in London, and he gave me the go-ahead to use
    the article as a source of inspiration. I got the impression he was very happy
    that we managed to make this film, he is a positive person and helped me a lot,
    including with on the screenplay.


    Ruxandra Ghiţescu set out to make a movie about adolescence
    as an age of emotional turmoil and loneliness, an age when music plays an
    essential part. At the same time, Otto the Barbarian speaks to teenagers and
    parents alike, it is an invitation to dialogue about depression and its consequences.




    Ruxandra Ghițescu: From the very beginning our goal was to make a film that relies
    on emotion rather than on intelligence, especially because it focuses on this
    age when emotion trumps reason. Otto is a very critical character, he is an
    introvert, he speaks very little, so his interactions with the others are a
    result of his emotions and feelings. We brought out the character’s entire
    emotional journey in his various relationships-with his parents, with his
    girlfriend’s mother, with the videos left behind by his girlfriend, and above
    all with music. I’m very happy to have caught a period when Otto the
    Barbarian is screened in theatres and has contact with the audience, it is
    only now that I really feel I have made a movie. The entire year 2020, with the
    restrictions entailed by the pandemic, with the film-going experience abandoned
    so easily, was very painful for me, and I imagine it was the same for others as
    well. so I enjoyed the experience of these festivals, the contact with the
    public and the experience of watching a film on screen in a cinema hall.



    Ruxandra Ghițescu paints a loving portrait, not
    without its surprises and some spectacular acting, writes critic Georgiana
    Mușat about the film produced by Alien Film jointly with Polar Bear and Alien
    Films Entertainment.The cast
    includes Marc Titieni, Adrian Titieni, Ioana Bugarin, Ioana Flora, Mihaela
    Sîrbu, Iulian Postelnicu, Ana Radu, and the late Constantin Drăgănescu. Ana
    Drăghici was the director of photography and Dana Bunescu was in charge with
    the editing.

  • Film director Alina Pintilie

    Film director Alina Pintilie

    Adina Pintilies feature film “Touch Me Not wins the Golden Bear, at the Berlin Film Festival.Shot between 2015 and 2017, “Touch Me Not has a mixed cast of professional and non-professional actors from all over Europe, from Romania to Iceland, Germany, Bulgaria, France and the UK. The director of the Berlin Festival, Dieter Kosslick, received the film with enthusiasm and said he was impressed with it.



    Adina Pintilie: “It was an act of trust from the organisers, but Im not sure our film is an exception. In any case, we were greeted with open arms and we are grateful for this. We worked a lot on this film, it took us about seven years to make. We began in 2011 and everything went well abroad in terms of funding, but then we couldnt get any funding in Romania, at least not until our international success became known. So it was a beautiful project, but difficult from many points of view.



    A combination of fiction, documentary and visual art and a daring experiment in terms of content and cinematographic language, “Touch Me Not is a personal exploration of the idea of intimacy and of the human need for authentic contact. “The film is an attempt to discover the different layers of intimacy. Intimacy is full of dangers. The obverse of love can be hate, aggression, and intolerance. These are all sides of the same complex reality, says Adina Pintilie:



    Adina Pintilie: “I believe the way in which we experience intimacy is influenced by many different factors, such as education, the culture we live in, our background. However, the practical reality of the interaction with others is much more complex. So this is how my film was born, out of curiosity. I realised I didnt know much about intimacy and human nature, and I began to rediscover some of the sometimes surprising ways of experiencing intimacy. I worked both with professional actors and with non-professionals, people who had never worked in cinema before but who were interested in this area of research. The result is a combination between their personal stories and fictional elements. We experimented with pschycodrama and tried out many things that highlighted precisely the mechanisms we often use in our interaction with the others without realising it. In fact, all characters are faced with this conflict between the need for intimacy and the fear of entering a relationship of interdependence, afraid that they may become too vulnerable.



    Touch Me Not is not Adina Pintilies first film on the border between fiction, documentary and the visual arts. Her previous productions are viewed by critics as a unique phenomenon on the local cinematographic landscape, standing out for their profoundly personal visual style, bold experimentation with the cinematographic language and an uncompromising exploration of human psychology. We asked Adina Pintilie what is the most important thing for her when she creates a story:



    Adina Pintilie: “Im always very open-minded when I begin a new project and the form it takes is often the result of its content. In this case I began with a script that was more of a general sketch for my research. There was an initial story and I chose my cast based on it, but the cast I ended up with was more suitable to a documentary film than a feature film. We tried to get to know the person in front of us, we worked with music that means a lot to these people and we worked with memories and with dreams. Having found the right people, I then began this experimentation in intimacy, using fiction as a structure that allowed us to work with elements from reality. Given that intimacy is a difficult area for many of us, including the participants in the project, the fact that I used a fictional structure created a safe zone around the project. This means that no one in my crew knew what is personal and what is fictional in the material we used in our work with the actors.



    “Touch Me Not is the first part of a future multi-platform project supported, among others, by the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Spinnerei Art Centre in Leipzig. “Exploring, beyond taboos, the essential role that intimacy plays in human development, Touch Me Not aims to open new paths, to educate, to promote tolerance and freedom of expression, to create a space for (self)reflection, making viewers to reassess their own ideas about intimacy, Adina Pintilie also said.



    Her most recent medium-length film called “Oxygen was part of the official selection of the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2010 and was nominated for the best short-film award and best young talent award of the Romanian film awards in 2011. “Journal #2, a Dutch-Romanian coproduction, Adina Pintilies latest short-film, won the ZONTA best film award by a female director at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhauseun in 2013, while her previous short film, “Balastiera #186, was selected in the auteur short film category at the Locarno Film Festival in 2008.


    (translated by: Cristina Mateescu)

  • One Step Behind the Seraphims

    One Step Behind the Seraphims

    ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims,’ Daniel Sandu’s film debut as a feature length director, came to Romanian theaters in late September in 35 towns and cities. Upon popular request, additional screenings were organized. Writer and director Daniel Sandu says that the movie is 80% based on real events, based on his experience as a theology student in the 1990s. Gabriel, played by Stefan Iancu, is a teenager who wants to be a priest and goes to a Christian Orthodox seminary. He tries at first to adapt to that environment, but then realizes the system is totally corrupt and abusive. According to Daniel Sandu, he wanted to make a different kind of Romanian movie.



    Daniel Sandu: “The main condition was to make a Romanian film that the audience wants to see again and again. There are too many cases of Romanian movies, very much appreciated, winning many awards, which, if you have seen once, you don’t necessarily feel like seeing again. At the same time, the movies that inspire me, mainly American, are movies that I can see dozens of times without getting bored. It is a rare sensation, and I hoped this movie would be like that, one that the spectator wants to go back to. We should make a return as an alternative to the famous Romanian minimalist movies, as well as an alternative to American blockbusters, which we cannot match with the means in Romania.



    ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims’ stars Vlad Ivanov, playing the maleficent Father Ivan, and Stefan Iancu, in his first feature length role, playing Gabriel:



    Stefan Iancu: “When I saw that Daniel was interested in this type of American cinema, I was happy, and it made me even more interested in this film. I would like to specify that I don’t have a problem with minimalist film or European film, and he definitely doesn’t either. I like these films, but I feel like watching something different after so much minimalism. I was curious to see a film made on the classic American pattern, but in Romanian. The moment I saw where Daniel wanted to take the movie, I was fascinated. I was very curious how he would manage that. And when I saw the movie, I could not believe that it is so close to what I’d like to see in Romanian cinema. I am very fond of American movies, because I grew up with them.



    Even though the movie is based on the director’s experience as a theology student, Daniel Sandu specified from the start that his intention was not that of attacking the Orthodox Church. In spite of all this, there were priests who reacted on Facebook, warning Christians that ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims’ is slander against the Church. Daniel Sandu explains:



    Daniel Sandu: “We expected reactions like this, these were subjective reactions from some clerics. It is not an official point of view. What is curious is the fact that these reactions came out two weeks before the movie was out. Those people did not know what they were talking about, and yet they still expressed an opinion about the move, and criticize it in the most ‘Orthodox’ way possible. The strangest pieces of criticism were also the funniest, they referred to me and to the protagonist as Satan. When I decided to put this story into a movie, I did not intend it to be a story that would create a publicity circus. The scandal emerged around the story and due to ignorance of its details.



    Stefan Iancu told us about his experience as a feature length actor:



    Stefan Iancu: ‘Photography was done in three chunks, ten days a piece, so we can see the passage of time, from one season to the next. The most difficult part for me, was trying to build a history for Gabriel. Gabriel begins in a certain way, has certain ideas, then starts changing. And because we did not film in chronological order, I had to do takes for the end of the movie, when Gabriel had to be and look one way, and then I would do a take from the beginning of the movie, where I was supposed to wear glasses, with my hair done differently. And it was not always difficult going from one Gabriel to another.



    ‘One Step Behind the Seraphims’ also features Ali Amir, Alfred Wegeman, Stefan Mihai, Niko Becker, Ilie Dumitrescu Jr., Cristian Bota, Marian Popescu and Radu Botar.


    (translated by: Calin Cotoiu)