“Monsters”

The Romanian production received the Audience Award at the Berlinale

Corina Sabău, 02.03.2019, 12:48

Monsters, the
only Romanian film selected for the Berlin International Film Festival, which
is the debut feature film of director Marius Olteanu, has received the Audience
Award granted by the German publication Tagesspiegel. The movie was voted by
the nine members of this independent jury that appreciated director Marius
Olteanu’s talent for using a special visual language to describe the
multi-layered nature of a relationship that had to cope with the pressure of
society. Highly appreciative of the prize he received at the Berlinale, Marius
Olteanu was happy to see his movie being screened four times more during the
festival, and he hopes Monsters will be equally successful in Romania. We
talked to Marius Olteanu about the reaction of the audiences who watched his
movie at the Berlinale and who participated in the Q&A sessions held there.

People
asked good questions, their questions showed that they reacted to what they saw
in the movie, they were interested in what they saw, they were excited. Some of
them confessed that they had not seen such a movie before, one that raises the
issues in ‘Monsters’. I received many questions and favorable reactions. One
day, while in the street, somebody came to me, hugged me and thanked me for the
film. There were many Romanians who came to see the movie and this was a great
joy for me. The movie has a certain type of humor, despite being a drama. It’s an
atypical love story which shows that the greatest proof of love is actually relinquishing
your love. I noticed that the Romanians who attended the screenings in Berlin had
stronger reactions to the film humor than the other spectators. It seems to me
that there is a level of understanding accessible primarily to Romanians and I
could gather that from their reactions, their laughter. It was a typically-Romanian
reaction to the film humor, a reaction that I enjoyed a lot.

Monsters was
included in the Forum section which is devoted to experimental projects that
focus on avant-garde tendencies, essays and political reports. The movie
presents one day in the life of two newlyweds who seem to be loved by their family,
by society and friends as a couple, but who are judged and rejected when they
are on their own. Here is director Marius Olteanu with more:

I have
already said it in other interviews, ‘Monsters’ is not a movie that gives
verdicts and labels people. It asks questions and targets those people who are
willing to think about these aspects. The movie also asks questions such as: to
what extent are we willing to open up to the others, to tolerate, to make
compromises, to understand the others, what happens to love within a couple
after many years, how does it survive, or if it does not survive, what do we
replace it with, or how do people react to a couple. The main characters in the
movie are loved by the others – family, society, friends – as long as they are
together, but when they separate, they are disregarded and labeled. And this is
another question raised by the movie, to what extent these labels are actually ‘definitive
sentences’. Because when we label people, we take a distance from them and thus
we miss the chance of getting to know them better, of meeting them and winning something
from this interaction.

The film Monsters
features Judith State, Cristian
Popa, Alexandru Potocean, Şerban Pavlu, Dorina Lazăr and Gabriel Răuţă,
and it was produced by Parada Film and Wearebasca, with the support of the
National Center of Cinematography.

Although it focuses
on the fragile relationship between a man and a woman, Monsters also raises
other issues. Here is director Marius Olteanu back at the microphone with more:

There is
another theme that I find equally important, namely the status of women in
society. I can also mention the theme of maternity, and how a woman comes to be
considered a WOMAN only when she becomes a mother. I find this a very serious
issue, and it happens in many other spaces, not only in Romania, namely that
women are regarded more as mothers and wives and less as human beings free to
choose a life in accordance with their own values. Many people believe that
this is the mentality of older generations, but I have friends of my age or
even younger who have this mentality, like their grandparents.

Monsters will
be previewed at the Transylvania International Film Festival – TIFF – and will
be released in Romanian movie theaters in late September.