It’s an unusually warm December day. I rush to our Films in Frame studio, where I’m meeting actress Ana Ularu and the magazine’s photo crew. We’re about to discuss her lead role in Subteran, the first Romanian TV show produced by Netflix, in which she stars alongside Florin Piersic Jr., Cristian Popa, Irina Artenii, and Cezar Grumăzescu.

This is the third time we’re meeting for an interview, a fact that surprises even her. I told her this time it will have a narrative form and is my first attempt at this format, but I feel she is  the right person to experiment with – after all, she was the first person in the industry to give me credit back when I was just a kid with big dreams and no real understanding of the colourful world I wanted to be part of. I notice how her face lights up as a sign of recognition. She arrived at the interview accompanied by her husband, Marc with whom she’s been sharing her life for the past 5 years, flying between Berlin and Bucharest. As soon as they enter the room, they start talking about their daughter, Ezra, whom they’d just dropped off at kindergarten after attending a Christmas celebration at the town hall. It’s fascinating to see how enchanted and completely enamoured they are with their daughter.

The night before, I’d briefly spoken with Ana to confirm the location. She told me she had scheduled hair and makeup at 7:30 am. “I got scared. I realised that my stubbornness to present myself as I am and  let go of any sort of vanity might lead to some very ugly photos that will remain on the internet forever. After a lifetime of everyone telling me – without me asking – that I have a bizarre face, or an unusual appearance, those comments eventually got to me. I feel the need to be beautiful and vain. I’ve always seen myself as too expressive to be considered beautiful in the conventional sense of the word.”

“I’ve never been aware I am beautiful. I’ve always seen myself as too expressive to be considered beautiful in the conventional sense of the word.”

Subteran revolves around Cami, a woman unwillingly drawn into the criminal underworld after an event that puts her family in danger. Driven by revenge and the need to protect her son, Cami uses her intelligence to succeed in a male-dominated world, turning into a hacker for an undercover agent – the only person who can help her escape the situation she’s been thrust into. I watched all six episodes over two days of binging, pleasantly surprised by the tension the show manages to sustain until the end. “I was thrilled by how smoothly it flows, by its pace. I loved my co-stars’ performance so much that I became a spectator myself.”

Unlike Grieta, the character she played in another Netflix production – Tribes of Europa – Cami has nothing extraordinary. She’s an IT specialist who loves her partner and cares for her child with affection and attention. A type of character Ana had never played before. “Not being the standout or the assassin, but the viewer’s perspective – that’s what I found most interesting about the character. She’s an ordinary person who has to navigate extreme situations, react quickly, and discover her strength while fighting for good. It was a pleasure to play someone so normal.” As I listen to her, I recall that during our last chat, she confessed nothing compares to the joy of the process when she discovers something new in her craft. Curious to know if she had any revelations while working on Subteran, she tells me how, during preparation, she watched all the videos of a well-known female hacker to better understand what the job entails, convinced she could never type as fast as a professional. “The funniest part is that I learned coding for this show. We had IT consultants who taught me lines of code as if they were script lines.”

“Not being the standout or the assassin, but the viewer’s perspective – that’s what I found most interesting about the character. She’s an ordinary person who has to navigate extreme situations, react quickly, and discover her strength while fighting for good. It was a pleasure to play someone so normal.”

Ana Ularu gained recognition with the lead role in Outbound / Periferic (dir. Bogdan George Apetri, 2010), which earned her several acting awards, including at the Locarno Film Festival and Thessaloniki International Film Festival. At 25 years old she barely could make a living. She had no dreams, nor expectations – neither during filming nor once the film began gaining worldwide recognition. Though very young, she understood that no award or recognition guarantees future success. However, fortune smiled upon her, and her performance in Outbound launched her international career, securing her a spot in the Berlinale’s Shooting Stars program for emerging actors. It marked the beginning of a long international career, bringing her countless roles abroad but fewer in Romania, where only TV show creators have offered her real opportunities over the past decade. She has starred in eight TV series in the last five years, two of which are Romanian productions – Spy/Master, produced by HBO/Max, and Subteran, the upcoming Netflix series. She has often wondered why she’s called to auditions worldwide but not in Romania, despite her efforts to show interest in acting in Romanian productions. “It’s either because I have an agent and there’s a general perception that I’m expensive, or it’s the eternal issue of my face not fitting the preferences of local directors.”

Anyone who has followed Ana Ularu’s career closely, reflecting on all the roles she has played, can recognise that most have been strong characters – independent, self-assured women – the kind of roles Romanian cinema has rarely given. In her article on the pervasive violence against women in the New Romanian Cinema, published in Films In Frame, Flavia Dima mentioned a 2016 study on how female characters in local films were perceived at the time. The survey revealed that the majority saw these characters as “dysfunctional, unequal women who handle household tasks in a male-dominated environment.” Which made me seriously wonder whether the rejection Ana has felt is directly tied to the type of characters she is automatically associated with – roles she could only access abroad.

“And yet, in theatre, I found different kinds of roles. For example, in Carousel, staged by Andrei Șerban, my character is completely different from what I’ve done so far in movies, where I usually run around with a machine gun. After all, I’m an actress, and whatever you ask me to play, I will play. I want to act in Romania because I deeply believe in Romanian cinema and what’s happening in our art scene.”

Insert here: Subteran – this Romanian TV series produced by Netflix, portraying strong women determined to achieve their goals unapologetically. “It feels like we’re finally catching up with the century we live in,” Ana tells me with a wry laugh. Cami must lie, control her emotions, and remain unyielding in the face of the men she encounters. At last, Ana has landed a role that could elevate her standing in the country where she most wanted to be taken seriously. “I came to Bucharest for the audition and they called me for a callback when I was on my way to the airport, heading back to Berlin. I want to earn my place here, so I went back. It’s such a joy to act in my own language and in my own country. To film at home and not have to fly back and forth across the globe.”

Ana loves her job. She is an actress who approaches her scripts with the diligence of a surgeon preparing for a difficult operation. Since I’ve known her, she has always been an absolute professional – engaged and ready to give her all. She describes her profession as a capricious lover who never allows her to rest. But she doesn’t seek peace. In moments when the phone doesn’t ring, she feels as though the universe is testing her patience, trying to teach her something. Over the years, she has learned not to step onto a film set with expectations or preconceived notions about a character. She goes with the flow, a kind of ease that only time can bring.

We take a break from the interview for the photo shoot. In the end, Ana came without makeup, as I had originally suggested. “Last night, I had a performance at Teatrul Act, in Constellations. Before going on stage, as I was putting on my makeup, I had a moment of reflection about what you asked me. I thought, if I can accept a director’s vision, why wouldn’t I approach our photo session with the same attitude?”

As we were struggling to figure out a way to use the black backdrop, since its support bar had mysteriously disappeared, Marc came up with a much more ingenious idea – hanging the backdrop on the open window frames. I look at Ana how fast she gets into character. Watching her pose for Sabina, the photographer, it feels as though she was born to be in front of the camera. She dances between shots to Ella Fitzgerald’s iconic songs playing on the record player. When she raises her arms, a large tattoo, of what looks like a sun, becomes visible on her right thigh. “I got it at 30 – it’s actually the sun and the moon. It represents duality, the light and darkness we all have within us.”

And it’s true that one sharp glance from Ana can send shivers down your spine. “Driving in Romania is outrageous. I have a raging hatred for drivers who come close to running over moms with kids and still have the nerve to shout at them. Those are the moments when I unleash my inner devil.” She begins recounting an incident in Marc was involved in Bucharest. Thanks to good instincts and some experience as an actor on action film sets, Marc was lucky to escape unharmed, but Ana unleashed all her fury. “The anger that came out of me at that moment, combined with the driver’s attempt to incriminate us, was colossal. I feel like blaming communism for people’s lack of respect for life. Here, a car is a status symbol; if you ride a bike, you’re seen as poor.”

We’re interrupted by a knock at the door. Marc peeks in timidly and hands Ana a coffee. She starts playfully teasing him and the darkness suddenly dissipates, letting the light come through. As we sit curled up in two grey armchairs, the duality inked on her right thigh becomes so visible in her gestures and tone. Yet my thoughts linger on her last words – the lack of respect for life, the communism I never experienced but felt closer than ever in the last two months. I recall what stayed with me from my last meeting with Ana: her belief that what truly sets us apart in this world are mentalities. I confess my fears to her and how the end of 2024 has made me seriously reconsider my next steps. I feel naive, unaware of the reality outside my bubble and deeply saddened of the different ways even members of the same family think. Ana swallows hard and begins gesturing emphatically as she recounts fragments of the Friday before the presidential election runoff, when along with several actors and cultural figures, she participated in the democracy rally organised in the centre of Bucharest. “Walking towards University Square, I felt fear. It seemed like everyone was looking at me oddly, and there were people everywhere who could harm me just because they knew where I was going and what I was thinking. Like it was written all over my face.” When she arrived at the square, where she was to speak on stage alongside other public figures, she was moved by the crowd scanting for democracy.

“To hear people shouting for freedom in 2024, in University Square, 35 years after the Revolution, is surreal.”

Ana was only 4 years old during the Revolution, but she remembers being fascinated by the shell casings she was collecting from her backyard. Living with her parents near the Military Academy, she mistook the sky lighting up for fireworks when she saw it through the window. “We hid in the cellar for three days. It was a time of misinformation and fear. At one point, some men came and tried to take my father away, in order to execute him. I clung to his leg and wouldn’t let go. Eventually, they left us alone. When I hear deluded people claiming things were better back then, it makes me want to scream.” Her face and tone are marked by both revolt and worry. I ask if being a mother gives her a stronger sense of responsibility about what’s going on in her country. She says she hopes Ezra will never feel ashamed of being half-Romanian but she doesn’t feel that being a mother has fundamentally changed her behaviour. She has always been vocal and informed about Romania’s socio-political events, no matter where in the world she had been. “Deciding to have a child was selfish – it was a deep need I had. I’ve always wanted to be a mother and from the moment she was born, everything became about her. I want to make the world a better place for her.“

Ana becomes emotional every time she talks about her family. The first thing she mentioned when we met was how deeply affected she was seeing Ezra experience stage fright. “She practised everything at home but once she got there, she panicked terribly. She kept saying she didn’t want to go on, not one bit. It broke my heart to see her like that.” In the end, Ezra was convinced by her father and sang with the other kids. “I get nervous too, but once I get into the groove, I become a show pony.”

Like Ana, the character she plays in Subteran would do anything for her child, who ends up in danger due to the circumstances she’s thrown into. “What drives Cami, paradoxically, is a desperate need for balance and peace, to keep her child and family safe – something I can relate to even more now that I understand what that means.” She approaches every role as a Rubik’s cube that needs solving. I was struck by how easily she inhabited the character, transporting herself into Cami’s visceral state of desperation, fear, and scepticism. Trying to empathise, I imagine how unsettling it must be to find yourself caught in a dangerous setup, unaware of the people you’re dealing with, their intentions, and being forced to hide from everyone, even from your family. “You know that kind of nightmare where someone is chasing you, and you’re hiding in a unknown house, searching for corners to conceal yourself? That was the thought and image I carried through the entire series. It’s only a matter of time before Cami runs out of hiding spots.”

She credits the set design by Simona Pădurețu as instrumental in creating the right atmosphere. Obscure spaces, where every corner and object is designed to convey unease and nothing is random. “The sets and costumes help enormously in shaping a character. It’s like starting with an advantage, as if someone gave you cheat notes.”

Subteran, she says, is pure fiction. While it draws inspiration from Romanian society, it’s not meant to mirror it. “We didn’t want to judge, moralise, or point fingers. We wanted to imagine a fictionalised underworld.” They shot the series during the Hollywood actors’ strike, making her one of the few international actors unaffected by the it. She believes the TV show is a high-quality product for the local market that deserves praise.

She enjoys writing, often brainstorming stories with Marc. Though none of their ideas have yet materialised beyond their imagination and discussions, they dream of directing something together. “It’s so rewarding to work with actors, to guide them with a word or direction and  see the light bulb go on. It’s a unique sensibility, knowing what triggers them.” She believes the time for that will come without rushing. In the meantime, she cherishes every moment with her family – Ezra and Marc – who accompany her wherever her professional life takes her. For her, they’ve become the most important thing. “I love raising this little fucking magical soul. Marc and Ezra are everything. If I were a country, they would be my flag.”

Subteran is available on Netflix starting today.

Laura Mușat

Film producer and founder of ADFR, she dreamed since she was little of having a magazine one day. Alongside her job as editor-in-chief, she writes the interview of the month. She loves animals, jazz music and films festivals.