“Heads and Tails” is inspired by a real news story about a young man of your own age who asked for his favorite manea song to be played in a club 10 times in a row. Exasperated, another client in the club went into an altercation with him, hit him, and the young man died a few days later, refusing medical help. First of all, what did you feel the first time you saw the news?

Confusion. I remember the first time I came into contact with this news I was still working on The World is Mine, and I know it was shown to me on a phone. A fragment of the news went viral, and people were making fun of the way an eyewitness was describing the incident, making a lot of grammatical errors. At that time, I didn’t exactly understand what it was about, nor did it seem funny to me.

I’ve seen the news again, years later. I’m not a fan of the 5pm News – nor do I watch them because I don’t have a TV. So I’ve lost the habit of coming upon this sensational way of turning daily tragedies into entertaining journalism. So when I runned into this news again on the internet, I didn’t understand what I was looking at exactly. How can a young man’s death be transformed into the title: Was his favourite manea song the death of him? So I believe it was confusion again, but maybe revulsion, too.

The film doesn’t focus on what caused the action (the incident in the club), but on the inner feelings of the character once he arrived home and the days of agony before he died. The film thus presents the character’s backstory and an explanation for his troubles. Did you talk to the victim’s family, did you try to tell the real story?

Actually, no. For both points.

The film does not intend to present a backstory. The film does not make a reconstitution.

What I tried to make is an alternative to the news. I tried to emphasize something else and focus more on the character’s drama, not on the event itself, but by using only the information in the news – so I built a fictional story with the screenwriter Raluca Mănescu. We did this because in our heads we already had a pretty clear idea on the structure of the film, and we felt that by going to talk to the family, we would’ve tried to squeeze something that didn’t have a place in the structure we had imagined … or that my initial intention to make this film with a certain content would have been sidetracked.

If not, then what inspired you to create this story for the character? Have you been inspired by the song?

Of course, the song has played an important role in building our fictional story, but its dramatic elements can be found entirely in the news, as well.

However, starting from the emotion of the song and its lyrics, we tried to justify the character’s state of mind – and give a reason to why someone would ask Heads and Tails ten times in a row, ignoring the possible consequences.

Understanding very well the relationship between brothers, which is also described in the song, I began to add personal elements in the protagonist and to get involved emotionally, attaching myself to him. The magnitude of the guilt that our character feels towards his brother was strong enough to motivate emotionally everything that followed after the incident.

I know the film was initially a short film, which you turned later into a feature. Why did you feel the need for this change?

I discovered the length of the film on the first day of shootings and I chose to follow it. It was a very organic process.

Since pre-production and even during the casting period, I had some uncertainties about the internal rhythm of the sequences. The page and minute did not apply to this situation, and together with Alex Calin we tried to reproduce the physical and psychological symptoms associated with acute brain injury as accurately as possible and put them on the screen. So, the length of the sequences have changed considerably and I had no choice but to follow it.

After the first day of shootings, we got the creative and production team together, and we looked at the good takes. We all knew our film had to be longer. I didn’t intend to make a feature, I just wanted to shoot it so that it sticks to our intention, and in the same time to follow the schedule for a short film, because we already had the financing and everything was in motion. After the first cut we had a bit over 70 minutes – so we decided to have additional shootings and add a beginning sequence in order to reach the official length of a feature – 75-80 minutes.

The film has long, static scenes but full of emotions. It’s harsh, uncomfortable and gives you different and powerful sensations, and it’s pretty hard to sit in the chair and wait for the tragic outcome. Looks like you’re attached to the character – did you feel the need to bring some justice to the young man the news was about?

Yes, maybe. But actually I’m not sure if I tried on purpose to make justice, but I wanted to show it all from another perspective. I don’t know if that means making justice.

But I was affected by the fact that the story lacked in empathy and that it was built on prejudices related to manele/manele fans. I wanted to show how much suffering was behind, and to create some empathy with this man, and to show that not “His favorite manea song was the cause of his death.”

Why did you choose Florin Salam to appear at the end of the film? Weren’t you afraid that his appearance might be interpreted as ironic?

SPOILER ALERT

I wouldn’t have started looking for financing and then shooting this project if I didn’t know that I have Florin Salam in the cast. His appearance is somehow essential to the film, because it validates it. His moment highlights the parallel between our approach and the news.

There have been and will be many different reactions to the sequence in which he appears. I never meant for it to be ironic, but rather a direct commentary to the news.

Within the structure of the film, the appearance of Florin Salam is built in the mirror with the bottle moment in the bar. They work just as well, and my intention was to create a buildup and a frustration in the viewer, which then founds release. Just as the bottle releases you from the loop in which I keep you captive with the repetitive song and the static camera, the appearance of Salam has the same effect, it frees you from the physical torment I expose you to by letting the protagonist agonize and crawl towards a door to which he will never reach.

The end of Laurențiu’s story is not a surprise to the viewer – he knows where the action leads to. However, I wanted the end of the film to be surprising, and the following emotional release to confront the headline of the news. And I wanted this to be the start of a discussion about the way we, as a society, perceive events, about empathy for a man’s death, but also about the prejudices we have on the manele genre, its fans and the way we choose to present them in the media.

How was the collaboration with Florin Salam for this film?

Florin Salam is an artist and a professional. He understood immediately and exactly what we wanted to do, and when we settled the financial and organizational details, everything worked perfectly. Initially, I didn’t want a re-orchestration and re-recording of the song, but Florin insisted and did it on his own initiative – asking me what my intention is, of course. The result works perfectly on the screen.

At shootings, he was punctual and generous, and wanted to do his job as best as possible, without acting superior and being picky.

After the shootings, he stayed for pictures, signed autographs and didn’t give us the impression of a star, but of a devoted and gallant artist.

Of course, it wasn’t easy to reach him. It was complicated until we managed to organize things as to stay within the budget and respect the timing, but all-in-all, meeting Florin Salam was surprisingly honest and human.

How was the film received abroad?

It was interesting to see how this film was discussed a lot for its novel structure and the persistence in keeping the narrative coherence, rather than the subject, manele or Florin Salam. There were more questions from the public about the importance of certain details in different scenes, about the finesse of Alex Călin’s interpretation – and what all these elements have to say about the last moments in a man’s life. In a way, precisely because these were discussions with art film and film festival enthusiasts, the addressed themes regarded the cinematic process  – and I had to explain them who Florin Salam is, what are the 5pm News, and how the manele genre is seen by the communities that have certain cultural standards .

Aaand the last question: What is the last song you have been listening to 10 times in a row?

The last song I’ve listened to repeatedly was Bear Necessities from The Jungle Book, I think – which I’ve sung with my 3-year old daughter on my shoulders, while dancing and goofing around the house. 🙂

Romina Banu

Photographer and editor; she co-founded Dissolved Magazine together with Melissa. For Films in Frame she gathers film and TV series recommendations for lazy weekends and she writes about interesting projects from the film industry. Other than that, she likes traveling, chilling with her cats and sleeping.