‘Immaculate, by Monica Stan and George Chiper-Lillemark

The film ‘Immaculate received 3 major awards in 2021 at the Venice Film Festival

Corina Sabău, 14.01.2023, 14:00

The film ‘Immaculate’, directed by Monica Stan and George Chiper-Lillemark, received 3 major awards in 2021 at the Venice Film Festival: the “Luigi De Laurentiis Award Lion of the Future” award for directors at their debut, the main award of the section, “Giornate degli Autori Director’s Award” and the “Autrici under 40” award granted by “Venezia a Napoli. Il cinema esteso” to author Monica Stan for the screenplay. In 2022, ‘Immaculate’ was also awarded the Golden Lynx Trophy at FEST — New Directors New Films Festival, in Portugal, in the fiction feature category, and the FIPRESCI Award of the International Federation of Film Critics at the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) Cluj-Napoca.

Based on a true story, Immaculate is a survival story featuring 18-year-old Daria, who is in rehab. ‘Immaculate’ was Romania’s submission for the “Best International Feature Film” category at the 2023 Academy Awards. Before ‘Immaculate’ Monica Stan had considerable experience in scrip writing, but she says she was reluctant to taking on the director role. ‘Immaculate’ meant a new experience and dismantled a lot of her preconceptions.

Monica Stan: “I haven’t graduated from the film department, and this is why I had difficulties trusting I would be able to handle the directing part. I figured that without specialized studies or at least without even making a short film, the others would not trust me with it. I even resorted to a different director before making the decision to co-direct the film together with George Chiper-Lillemark, but things didn’t work, I started to realize that I will never find somebody to make the film as I would like it. It became clear to me that with this film I wanted to be more than a writer, because it wasn’t just the plot that needed saying, it had to be said from my own point of view. Obviously, you could say it in many different ways, and get many different films. But I wanted one particular film, the one I had in mind, so I realized it was me who had to direct it. From the very beginning I wanted to work with George Chiper-Lillemark as a director of photography, and I discovered he has a very complex approach, he does not separate the photography from the plot, but rather sees the film as a whole. That was his approach with the other films too, and thats why hes a very good cinematographer and film director at the same time. ‘Immaculate’ is also his debut as a feature film director and I am very glad that we made this decision, to direct together, George and I had an extraordinary symbiosis working on this film, we got along and worked very, very well.”

We also spoke with Monica Stan about the experience of writing a screenplay inspired by a biographical episode, of a story about the world we are living in and the power relations we find at all the levels of society.

Monica Stan:” It was a very long and beautiful process, but often quite painful. As is already known, the script is inspired by a real story, but it does not tell the story to the end. It would have been actually impossible, because its impossible to rewrite, to remember everything youve experienced, especially since what happened at that moment was for me very deep and intimate, I couldnt say that it had a correspondent in some external actions. Thats why, when I wrote the script, I looked for a way to put these things in a narrative that should preserve the inner transformation that I had gone through, and equally have action, capture the transformation of the character. I mean, the experience I had in that clinic could become a larger story, these were events that could happen anywhere. Thats why I wanted to tell the story, because it was also related to life outside the clinic. It was only in that space that I realized the mechanisms of manipulation more clearly, the environment there made me more aware of the way these power relations work and of how they influence you as an individual. There were mechanisms that I had also met outside, in school, at college, and that I was going to meet in various other contexts. I mean, the dynamic between the characters that I tried to capture wasnt limited to the clinic setting, which is why I wanted to tell this story, because its not just an addiction story. Rather, I wanted to investigate this dynamic and its causes and to understand how we can become more aware of it.”

‘Immaculate’ features Ana Dumitraşcu, Vasile Pavel and Cezar Grumăzescu in the main roles. The cast also includes Rares Andrici, Ilona Brezoianu, Bogdan Farcaş, Ionuţ Niculae, Florin Hriţcu, Tiberiu Dobrića, Ninel Petrache, Dan Ursu, Ozana Oancea, Diana Dumbravă and Cristina Buburuz. (AMP, LS)