Romanian film-maker Calin Peter Netzer’s most recent feature-length film

Familiar, in theatres since late January 2024

Corina Sabău, 17.02.2024, 14:00

Familiar
is Calin Peter Netzer’s most recent feature-length film. It has been shortlisted for the Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival’s 27th
edition.

Familar
has been in theaters since late January. Familiar tells the tale of
a film director who is looking into the history of his own family, pushing the access
towards the family’s most fragile moment of its existence: the immigration to Germany
in the 1980s. Immigration which occurred under dubious circumstances and which
reveals family secrets, links with the Securitate as well as older wounds, The
film is built with the minuteness of a detective investigation, where the
viewer is invited to be the investigator himself, Calin Peter Netzer said about
Familiar. The screenplay was written by Călin Peter Netzer and Iulia Lumânare. Barbu
Bălăşoiu and Andrei Butică are the directors of photography. On the cast, there
are Emanuel Pârvu, Iulia Lumânare, Ana Ciontea, Adrian Titieni, Victoria Moraru
and Vlad Ivanov.

Winner
of the Gopo Award in 2019 in the Best Actor category, Iulia Lumânare got significantly
involved in the making of Familiar, thus resuming her work together with Călin
Peter Netzer. Iulia is a co-scenarist, an actress, a casting director and an
acting coach. Here is Iulia Lumanare, speaking about her involvement in Familiar
and about the reasons that prompted her to work with filmmaker Calin Peter Netzer
for a second time around

The film is inspired by the process myself and Călin Peter Netzer have been going through, lived and experienced
when we started writing the screenplay. As, initially, the film was about his
family’s immigration to Germany in the communist regime, in the early 1980s. After
three months when we looked at the story from each and every angle, what we
actually wanted from it appeared clearer to us. So we decided the story started
off from the very moment we lived back then, in 2019, when we were thinking
about the film. What we had to say had its origins from that kind of present.
About the reason why I resumed work with Călin Peter Netzer, what I can say is
that his previous film, Ana, mon amour, still is an essential experience in
my career. From that moment on I was not just an actress or teacher, I was also
a screenplay writer. I knew it, I had the intuition of the fact that I
could write it, but Călin Peter Netzer was the one who put all his trust in me and
I shall always be very grateful to him for that. And here we are, we’ve been working
together for the second time around, because the first time when we worked
together was indeed something very special, with no conceit or the conflicts
that may flare up when artists work together. And that’s what Familiar is also
about, it is a film about truth, about the things we cannot stand seeing in us,
about those things we would like nobody to see, in fact. That is exactly why
the topic has somehow turned into something about us, even though there is a
lot of fiction there, that’s for sure.

The
Child’s Pose (2013), Călin Peter Netzer’s third feature-length film, after the
many-time awarded productions Maria and Medal of Honor scooped the Golden Bear
in the Best Feature-length Film category as part of the Berlin Film Festival. The
Child’s Pose thus became the first Romanian film ever to have scooped such an
award. In 2017, Călin Peter Netzer returned in the Berlinale’s Official
Selection with Ana, mon amour and won the Golden Bear for Outstanding Artistic
Contribution. His films have also been very well received by the public setting
box office records in Romania. A co-writer
of the movie script for Ana, mon amour and Familiar, Iulia Lumânare spoke
about the connection between the last three films made by Călin Peter Netzer.

Familiar can be watched jointly with Ana, mon amour and The Child’s
Pose, it can make some sort of a trilogy together with these two films. In all
these films there is a universe which is very familiar to Călin Peter Netzer, which
he rendered very realistically. All these films are about identity, about what,
one way or another, troubles the human being. The quest for identity is a quest
we find in all these characters in the films, irrespective of their plot. And through
this quest of the characters, a lifetime quest, for some of them, the stories acquire
their universal scope, no matter how specific they may be. As for Familiar, a
filmmaker who wants to make a film explores the past of his own family and
tries to restore the ties between the members of his family, yet he finds out
he is unable to do that. That is very difficult as, just as we know, you do not
choose your family, you take your family as it is. Whereas the central character
in Familiar fights his family, his parents, trying to raise their awareness
regards several things they cannot understand or accept.

The
producers of Familiar are Călin Peter Netzer and Oana Iancu, through Parada Film
production house. The film is co-produced by Cinema Defacto (France), Gaïjin
(France) and Volos Films (Taiwan).