\n
<\/p>\n
Screened
\nin the World Cinema Documentary section of the 42nd edition of
\nSundance, the largest independent film festival in the United States, Acas\u0103, My Home won the festival’s World
\nCinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography. The jury praised the
\nfilm for the fluidity and tenacity of the camerawork. Radu Ciorniciuc and
\nMircea Topoleanu were responsible for the film’s cinematography. The film was
\ndue to open the 13th edition of the One World Romania documentary
\nfilm festival, but the entire event was postponed due to the coronavirus
\noutbreak. <\/p>\n
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\n
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Acas\u0103, My Home is about the Enache family, who
\nlived amid the wilderness of the V\u0103c\u0103re\u0219ti Delta, an abandoned water reservoir
\nin Bucharest that in time was taken over by vegetation and became a home to
\nhundreds of species of animals and rare plants. The family lived in a shack in
\nthe middle of this incredible ecosystem for almost twenty years until the land
\nwas awarded protected area status and renamed the V\u0103c\u0103re\u0219ti Nature Park,
\nthereby becoming first the urban nature park in the country. The film’s
\ndirector Radu Ciorniciuc followed the Enache family for four years, documenting
\ntheir life both before they were evicted from the delta and after, when they
\nmade the transition from a life lived in perfect harmony with nature to one in
\nwhich they had to navigate the challenges of city life. <\/p>\n
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A
\njournalist by trade, Ciorniciuc is one of the founders of Casa Jurnalistului
\n(The Journalist’s House), a Bucharest-based collective for independent
\nreporters; has written for The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Channel 4 News and ZDF;
\nand has won many local and international awards, including from the Royal
\nTelevision Society and Amnesty International UK in 2014 and the Harold Wincott
\nAward for Business Economic and Financial Journalism in 2016. We asked him how
\nhe made the transition from journalism to documentary film making:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The
\ntransition was relatively natural in my case, because in the reports I used to
\nmake for The Journalist’s House I would always try to delve deeper into my
\nsubjects and take a more documentary approach. In Acas\u0103, My Home, I realised I couldn’t possibly tell the family’s
\nstory using only the limited tools of journalism. So, that’s when I began
\nlooking for different ways to tell their story and to tell it in a manner that
\nwas as close as possible to how I saw it in my mind. The four years I spent
\nworking on Acas\u0103, My Home was like
\ngoing to film school for me, I took part in many workshops around Europe, where
\nI met professionals from whom I learnt a great deal. It all came out of a need
\nto tell this story in a more profound and complex way than I would have been able
\nto do in a reportage piece.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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\n
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Acas\u0103, My Home was one of the most popular films
\namong the public at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, with its heart-breaking
\nportrayal of the youngest members of the Enache family and the challenges they
\nface at an age at which most other children are more interested in tablets and
\nsmartphones. Director Radu Ciorniciuc:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Acas\u0103, My Home could be described as a family
\ndrama. It tells the story of this family over the course of four years. I
\nfollowed them for two years while they lived in the V\u0103c\u0103re\u015fti Delta and for
\nalmost two more years after they were resettled in the city, during the process
\nof their social integration. The film is made in collaboration with Lina Vdov\u00eei,
\nwho co-wrote the script, and Mircea Topoleanu. None of us had any experience of
\nfilmmaking, but we managed to work together, and at some point we were joined
\nby a film producer with more experience in this field. In any case, because we
\nare journalists and have access to channels that allowed us to stay in
\npermanent contact with the public, the project enjoyed a certain visibility. We
\nalso tried to consolidate the social project we initiated and which was aimed
\nat making the transition to city living less traumatising for both the children
\nand their parents, and we got a lot of help in this endeavour from the public. It
\nwas with this support that we were able to launch the multimedia project called
\nAcas\u0103 consisting of a photo album with
\npictures taken by the children themselves during their first year of
\ntransition, when they documented their departure from the delta all the way
\nthrough to the end of their first year in school. They had never been to school
\nbefore that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
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The
\nteam who worked on the film also launched a social project involving various
\nspecialists and humanitarian organisations. The eleven members of the Enache family
\nhad been living a life cut off from society, with no ID papers and no access to
\neducation and healthcare. Now, all nine children have IDs, go to school and get
\nregular medical check-ups, and the adults have jobs. Radu Ciorniciuc:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
There
\nwere a number of contradictory things that drove me to make this film. Despite
\ntheir obviously precarious social condition, I was fascinated by the strong
\nfamily feeling they had and how they cared for one another. Coming to this film
\nproject after living abroad for some years, a period in which I worked really
\nintensely, almost to the point of burnout, I was all the more fascinated by
\nthese people. This is partly what kept me involved with this subject, the way these
\npeople related to each other, despite their precarious material situation. It
\nwasn’t new to me, just something I’d forgotten about. I lived on my own from
\nwhen I was quite young and I had somehow forgotten what it’s like to live with
\nyour brothers and sisters and for your parents to take care of you. This is
\nwhat drove me to want to do more for them than just produce a reportage. And,
\nin a way, this film made me less afraid of love and vulnerability. (Tr. CM)<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A talk with first-time director Radu Ciorniciuc about his award-winning film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":162841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[45024,35344,43045],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-162840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-ciorniciuc","tag-documentary","tag-vacaresti"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n