Romanian Filmmakers at the Berlinale
Adrian Sitarus most recent production “Illegitimate has enjoyed a lot of praise from foreign film critics.
România Internațional, 27.02.2016, 14:00
The French daily Le Figaro has eulogized the film that has entered the competition in the Berlinales “Forum section, stating that the filmmaker has skilfully avoided being trapped by a biased film, he does not judge his characters and has made a provocative film. In turn, the film critic of the Cineuropa site has written that the spectator is lured into a convincing family drama, proving how easy it is to judge from the outside and how the perspective on things changes when youre placed at the centre of the story. “
Filmmaker Adrian Sitaru confessed his film was a hybrid of docufiction and imagined scenario, as he improvised a lot when picking the sequences, with the clear purpose of being faithful to the truth and rendering the characters authentic experience. “Illegitimate, one of the most challenging Romanian films of the past years, tells the story of two brothers, featuring actors Alina Grigore and Robi Urs, and their illegitimate love story. In their family the boundaries between the moral and the legal have never existed. Here is Adrian Sitaru speaking about the feedback his film has got so far.
“By and large, we have had a very good feedback. And I could say that our being selected for the Berlinale is due to the films French co-producers, who watched the film in an initial stage, that is almost a year ago, they fell in love with it and helped us a lot with the editing, they even found another international distributor. And they also came up with the idea of sending the film to the Berlinale. The fact that it was shortlisted took us by surprise, all the more so as we had not completed work on the film. Favourable feedback came from other sources as well, but our greatest joy was the selection for the Berlinale.
“Illegitimate is a film where humour and drama blend into a tragicomedy about love (conjugal, brotherly, bodily), about relationships falling apart, about the choices we make for or against life. It is also a film about physical love between brothers, a taboo topic, a topic not much talked about, but on which there is a considerable amount of specialist research“. Thats how Adrian Sitaru presented his latest film “Illegitimate. Next Adrian Sitaru will tell us the story of his movie:
It is a special project, it is not based on a classical screenplay, with written lines, I wanted the film to be more of a documentary. The formula, a hybrid between documentary and feature film was a challenge for me. I for one wasnt sure how the film would be. Actually, while working with the actors, I went through all sorts of stages. Some aspects were not working as I had envisaged and I had to come up with different solutions. Alina Grigore advanced the idea of a theatre performance with well-defined characters. The emotional charge emerged along the way. A friend of mine who saw the film compared it with a jazz piece, and I liked the comparison, because this is the way this film was made. Just like in jazz music, where musicians improvise, in my movie everybody contributed their creativity. My role was to stick to the narrative thread until the end. I probably took the story a little bit too far, to an area I was interested in, that of an impossible love, questionable from a moral point of view. Eventually all the pieces mixed well together and formed this film ‘Illegitimate. “
Next Adrian Sitaru will continue the story of the atypical manner in which he worked for his film “Illegitimate.
“The shooting was specific to an observational documentary, I suggested the actors to set themselves a certain goal and then to improvise. Thats how they tried to handle their own principles and beliefs, how they made their own choices. And I never imposed them to end a scene in one way or another, to say this line or that one. I think this is what happens in life, the first words one utters are the most authentic ones. That was the case of the film too. I thought that the first taking was the most precious. And actors were extremely credible.
The cast of “Illegitimate includes Adrian Titieni, Bogdan Albulescu and Alina Grigore, as well as amateur actors of the InLight acting school such as Robi Urs, Cristina Olteanu, Miruna Dumitrescu, Liviu Vizitiu and Mihaela Perianu.
“Illegitimate is Adrian Sitarus fourth feature film. His previous productions include “Pescuit Sportiv – “Hooked (2008), “Din dragoste cu cele mai bune intentii – “Best Intentions (2011) and “Domestic – “Domestic (2012). All these productions won important awards in leading film festivals. Adrian Sitarus short reels are also award-winning productions. The titles include Waves (2007), Lord (2009), The Cage (2010), The Party (2012), Art (2014), Trip (2014).
The Berlinales Generation 14plus section also short listed Romanian filmmaker Roxana Stroes short “One night in Tokoriki. Romanian actors Iuia Ciochina and screenplay writer Ruxandra Ghitescu were shortlisted for the festivals “Berlinale Talents category, while the Panorama Dokumente sub-section included Livia Ungur and Sherng-Lee Huangs docufiction “Hotel Dallas.
(Translated by E. Nasta)
