Teenagers from around the world, press the REC button! Super International Film Festival started the registrations for the 2018 edition. The deadline is on March 20th, but we know for sure that you wouldn’t want to leave this until the last minute.

What do you mean you didn’t hear about Super until now? SUPER is that cool festival made by teenagers for teenagers (and not only for them), which was created in 2013 thanks to some adolescents who had a great desire to have a space of their own, where to project their films and meet other people like them. Now, at its sixth edition, the festival is waiting for your short films until March 20^th.

In order to convince you that Super isn’t just the right place for your films, but also a community of adolescents just as passionate of film and arts as you, where you will feel safe, we talked with the two winners of the last edition. Bogdan Iancu and Iustin Frujină worked together on the short film called ‘Downloads’ and won the grand Super Prize. If you want to find out more about their film, about the challenges they faced as teenagers who just started making films, and why Super has a special place in their hearts, you should read the following short interview:

Tell us a bit about your film, the winner of Super 2017, and about how it reached the competition 🙂

Bogdan Iancu: The story of ‘Downloads’ started long before writing the script. I was inspired by an event that happened to me and Iustin (together with whom I directed this short film). It all happened in one autumn; we were walking together with a group of girls from Metropolis Theatre towards Romană Square. I was behind the group because I was texting someone, when I felt an arm around my shoulders. When I looked behind, I discovered a man around 25-27 years old whom I have not seen in my life. He told me that he was a policeman and he had some videos with me selling drugs (which, obviously, wasn’t true) and that I should go with him at his van around the corner. I try to politely leave when another two guys about the same age that obviously weren’t policemen, appeared around me. The three of them were telling the same story. Long story short, there were three unpredictable guys, a gun pointed at me and a shocked friend. This kind of event sticks with you whether you want it or not.
Maybe, as a defense mechanism and, probably, in order to try to forget this story, I decided to write it on subreddit (r/letsnotmeet), a platform where people share their weird stories and meetings with strange persons. On this platform, someone commented that he was touched by this story and he seemed like in a movie. ‘Good idea’, I said to myself. I wrote a simple script and I created the boy around whom the entire action was happening. The story finishes exactly with the event from Romană Square.

Iustin Frujine: Firstly, ‘Downloads’ is a very personal project; the final scene was inspired by a real event which marked me and Bogdan. Together, we started to gather up ideas and after a couple of months, the script was finished. From that point on, the next steps came naturally, leading to the final and decisive one: the film submission at Super Festival.

What were the challenges in making your film?

Bogdan Iancu: For me, everything was a challenge, from directing to the production activity. A week before we started filming, I thought that we, obviously, needed rehearsals. The truth is that we needed much more, but that was all the time we had. I don’t think it makes sense to concentrate on the difficulties of the project because neither then, nor even now, did I feel them. I was surrounded by incredible and passionate people, who were attracted to the story, both the actors (in the main roles Iosif Paştina and Agata Tabacu) and the team (Matei Dumitru, camera, Alexandru Tamazlicaru, sound department). If you had told me from the beginning about the stress I would feel during the shooting, I would have said no from the start. But together with these people it all felt like a walk in the park.

Iustin Frujine: As a directing debut, we had to deal with a lot of technical and logistic issues. The camera battery which we used had a low life, and we did not have any charging options while filming outdoor. Keeping up with the natural light and not losing it, was another challenge. Also, in the indoor locations where we shot our first scenes, we had to find the right position for the lights and for the props. Finishing the script can be problematic; it seems that there is always room for improvement.

Why do you think that teenagers have to register this year at Super Film Festival?

Bogdan Iancu: Initially, while I was writing the script, I did not have any target (a festival, for example), I was just making it. I have always been passionate about writing and I thought I could exercise by putting the story into a script. If Super did not exist, ‘Downloads’ probably would have been just a script. But when this great opportunity appeared, I contacted Iustin and Matei Dumitru (our camera man) and started working. I am the type of person who needs a motivation and a real stake in order to really work for something, and this is what this festival represented for me. When I am thinking about it, it astonishes me and I barely believe that something written by me in a random night was projected in a cinema. I don’t think I have to say anything else about the Super festival, because just speaking about my experience regarding the fest represents a recommendation. Super is the only festival known to me that rewards more than talent, equipment, organization, it honors passion, and for teenagers passionate about film this is the place to be.

Iustin: Firstly, Super is an event which I would recommend to everyone for all the things I discovered during the festival: teenagers who have the same passions and are interested in film (and not only), and their projects which are promoted by Super. The film festival was the main motivation for starting to work at ‘Downloads’, and I would say that the final result exists due to this event. I constantly encourage my loved ones to express their feelings through any form of art (poetry, music, film, etc.), and I think that Super can bring this out of people. At my first edition of Super I met people with whom I still keep in touch. The fact that I met so many people that were almost my age, and with the same passion as mine, motivated and assured me that the decision to follow this path was good.

Super Festival is waiting for your short films until March 20^th, 2018. The rules and the registration form can be found here. For more details about the festival, check their website or Facebook page.

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.