24 films will race for the “Golden Bear” trophy at Berlin International Film Festival, which has just kicked off and will end on February 18th. A Romanian movie is among them: “Ana, mon amour” directed by Calin Peter Netzer.
After winning “Golden Bear” with “Child’s Pose” at Berlinale in 2013, Netzer is again in the race for the most important award of the festival. “Ana, mon amour” is a love story falling apart under the pressures of the wide world. The film is available in Romania as of March 3, shortly after its world premiere.
Actress Diana Cavallioti is starring the leading part. “It’s a very difficult story, I think is widely experienced by a lot of people around us and I can realize how superficial is our view over the world,” she says.
Known for her parts in “Memories from the Golden age-2” and TV series “One step ahead” and “A mad week”, actress Diana Cavallioti is collaborating with Netzer for the first time.
“Ana, mon amour” is the analysis of a love story, an atypical journey that is capturing the most tensioned and most delicate moments in a couple’s evolution.
The leading characters, Toma and Ana, know each during college, come closer in no time and embark on a love affair that soon becomes a fight against everybody. Due to some problems in her childhood, Ana has frequent panic attacks, while Toma assumes his role of unconditioned protector. Although he seems to hold control over their relation, few years later he ends up revolving around a woman whom he cannot understand, forcing his limits to save her.
According to the director, the film is not exploring the erosion of Toma’s relation with Ana, but is rather focusing on the inability of adequately building a relationship.
Netzer’s fourth feature film, “Ana, mon amour” is an adaptation of the novel “Luminita, mon amour” written by Cezar Paul-Bădescu.
Another film directed by a Romanian filmmaker will be screened at Berlin Festival, in a section dedicated to German productions. “La drum cu tata/On the road with my father” directed by Anca Miruna Lăzărescu is inspired from the real story of a Swabian family from Arad, western Romania, who embarks on a journey through the communist Eastern Europe in 1968. Yet, the Prague spring is knocking them off their perch.
“I left in 1990 after the borders were opened. I was 11 years old and it was only when I started studying at the film direction school that I realized that my soul and heart are somewhere else and that I have other stories to tell than my colleagues coming from Germany. I don’t think I could and I wouldn’t and I’d found unfair to tell a present story from Romania with some game rules of the society today. I find much more safe telling a story from the past,” said the female director.
Anca Miruna Lazarescu was born in 1979 in Timisoara, Romania. She moved to Germany with her parents in 1990. She studied at the University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich, attended summer classes at UCLA in Los Angeles and various scriptwriting workshops. “On the road with my father” is her debut feature, premiered at the Munich International Film Festival in June 2016.