We all know that Corneliu Porumboiu’s latest film, La Gomera / The Whistlers, was the only Romanian feature film this year at Cannes Film Festival – the film that has been the big step towards the Official Competition for the famous Romanian filmmaker, but he especially proved that he is capable to completely reinvent himself stylistically and formally. But beyond this film that has been on everyone’s lips – at home, also at the festival – Romania has had a relatively solid presence this year at the festival, even if none of the suitcases that returned on Otopeni on Saturday had an award inside. So, a little bit more in detail about how Romania was represented at # Cannes72 – from short films to Romania’s national pavilion.

Apart from La Gomera, the only Romanian film present in one of the competition sections at Cannes, there was the short film The Last Trip to the Seaside by the young filmmaker Adi Voicu, selected in the short film competition of Semaine de la Critique section, led by the French Union of Film Critics. With a length of 12 minutes, the film builds a small diorama of the Romanian society inside a train traveling on the Bucharest-Constanta route. The title acts as an implicit question about the fate of the six characters in the wagon – a couple of precious but hypocrite young intellectuals, two elderly and over-curious women, a Turkish citizen and an impatient young woman. Using long shots operated by Barbu Bălăşoiu (Sieranevada, Last Night), the film borrows some features specific to the New Wave in its formal structure, with minor updates: the boiling point of the screenplay is the (conscious or unconscious) racist attitude of the Romanian passengers, addressing a topic more and more discussed in the Romanian cinema. However, the archetypal portraits of the characters seem to be sketched with thick strokes, which give a slightly too didactic tone, demonstrative of the whole process.  Nonetheless, Adi Voicu remains a filmmaker worth to be followed in the future.

The rest of the Romanian short films present at Cannes were brought together under the Romanian ShortWaves initiative – an annual set of Romanian short films organized in the non-competition section Cannes Short Film Corner (since 2004), a one-week long event attached to the space dedicated to industry, Marche du Film. This is a relatively controversial section of the festival – it is rather designed to give young filmmakers the opportunity to visit the Cannes festival and create connections in the industry by networking, so the only criterion by which films are admitted is the payment of an entry fee. However, the films in Romanian ShortWaves (a program initiated in 2008) are pre-selected by Asociatia Secvente, the organizer of the program, but only when it comes to student films – short films produced by a company are automatically accepted. Like all films in the Short Film Corner, Romanian ShortWaves’ short films could be watched for a week on individual screens on the 1s level of Palais de Festivals, as well as on the Cinando online platform.

The following films were part of the Romanian ShortWaves 2019 selection, with the presence of well-known filmmakers, as well as young talents in the film industry. Some titles are already known to the local audience, being present at festivals such as TIFF, NexT and Filmul de Piatra, as well as important international festivals: the multi-awarded The Christmas Gift (dir. Bogdan Mureşan), Today Artist, Tonight Taxist (dir. Dumitru Grosei), The Call (dir. Anca Damian), Everything is Far Away (dir. Emanuel Pârvu), Washington (dir. Gabriel Achim), The Island (dir. Adina Dulcu), Ionuț and Călin (dir. Sorin Poamă), Must Love Kubrick (dir. Alma Andreescu), Unsilenced Voices (dir. Ioana Mischie), The Tower of Pisa (dir. Bogdan Ilieşiu), A Death in My Family (dir. Andra Tarara), The Beast (dir. Andreea Lăcătuş), Farewell Daddy (dir. Bianca Sescu), and The Last Trip to the Seaside.

Of the 14 films, only half had a public screening in Palais F a Marche du Film, since screenings in Marche are scheduled by renting the halls. Apparently, the criterion for being selected in this category was the level of “confirmation” in other previous festivals, or, at least, this was what the filmmakers who did not benefit of this opportunity were communicated. Although, by this logic, there is a relatively inexplicable lack of films such as A Death In My Family (dir. Andra Tarara, nominated for the Young Hope Award at Gopo 2019) or The Beast (dir. Andreea Lăcătuş, the Best Fiction Film Award at Filmul de Piatra 2018, in competition in Shanghai) among the films screened at Palais F. And if the objective of ShortFilm Corner is to promote young talents that need support in the beginning of their career, then maybe there should be no exclusive criteria for these screenings.

Romania’s national pavilion is located in the colorful and diverse Village International, in the Pantiero Dock area, on no. 220 – a colorful gathering of stands and flags representing national cinema centers around the globe. Although it’s an area mostly frequented by producers or festivals participants looking to snatch another cocktail on the  Village’s famous happy hours, these pavilions are practically the most visible way for cultural delegates from around the globe to promote their authors and their latest film productions. Organized by the National Cinema Center, the booth was rather modest compared to others – with a catalog of 2018-2019 productions, Romanian ShortWaves flyers and several presentations of local institutions such as UNATC and CINETIc.

A young producer told me that he would like the Romanian stand to promote more the co-production capacities of the country and, in particular, the new tax rebates available for international productions – ranging from 35% to 45% – and to be more present and visible as an institution at international level. Indeed, if there is a suggestion, it would be for the stand to promote more both Romanian films individually and local production houses, but also the recent legislative framework, which is a favourable one for big productions – and here I would name Jacques Audiard’s newest film, The Sisters Brothers, which has benefited from these new services. Instead, openness to international is existent: the stand hosted the European Women’s Audiovisual Network cocktail, Europe’s largest network of female professional filmmakers, whose executive chairman is Ada Solomon.

In a few words, although Romania had quite a strong and visible presence at the festival, there is room for improvement for the institutional organization of the Romanian participation in Cannes, in the future. On the one hand, I find that there is a need for a much stronger support for the filmmakers who are at the beginning of their careers, especially those who have not yet made their debut in feature film, and who need the most the connections that a participation in an A Category festival can offer them, even in a non-competition section. On the other hand, given the new legislative context, the industry and local market being more and more open towards co-productions, as well as the emergence of new production houses within the local industry (I mention here Micro Film because it builds important young producers), a greater strategy for promoting the services that can be accessed in Romania by foreign filmmakers would be helpful. After all, I think our presence in Cannes could be defined not only by the selection of films in the Official Competition or its parallel sections – and for that, we need a strategy.

A special report by Flavia Dima

English translation by Andreea Toader

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.