Written/Unwritten, the latest short film directed by Adrian Silisteanu has won the Grand Prix Award at Tampere Film Festival held between 8.03 – 12.03 in Finland.

Silisteanu’s short film will also be Tampere’s Film Festival proposal for the 2017’s European Film Awards. Tampere is one of the biggest and most important short film festivals in Europe, gathering around 30.000 industry professionals and film lovers every year.

Adrian Silisteanu is a Romanian DOP, known for his work on films such as Fixeur, Illegitimate, Somewhere in Palilula. As a film director, Silisteanu debuted in 2012 with The Ditch, a short film produced by 4 Proof Film and available online on Cinepub’s official youtube channel.  Written/Unwritten is his second film as a director and as always, we were curious to know more so we talked to Adrian about the Tampere experience and his plans for his latest short film:

Hi Adrian! I really want to thank you first, for being so nice and finding some time to talk to us in the short period of time given. I have read wonderful things about Tampere Film Festival: it is the oldest North-European short film festival and one of the top ones in Europe. What does this prize represents for you and your career as a film director?

I don’t think this award or the European Film Awards nomination will influence my career on the short term. I am a director of photography after all and I don’t intend to switch to directing soon. I have directed two short films so far, both about real people whose stories touched me deeply. I don’t see myself changing the pattern anytime soon, if I were to direct again. Right now, I want to keep on working as a director of photography on as many films I can and I think that the experience I had as a director with Written/Unwritten helped me gain a lot of respect for film directors. I got to see how difficult the entire process is, having to decide what’s best for your movie every step of the way. I think that today I’m much more aware of what it really means to be in that position and I can definitely appreciate more a director’s decisions even if maybe his aren’t the same as mine.

Can you tell us what true story, or character inspired you to write and direct your latest short?

When one of my kids were born, I saw a Roma family whose daughter of 14 years old was one of the mothers waiting in the birthing room. Even though they raised her since she was a baby, they weren’t their real parents and they had no officials adoption papers either. The thought that they could lose their daughter appalled them and you could see and feel their deep panic. This feeling that they shared has been deeply imprinted on my mind for a long time. I was standing there and realized that if they had asked me for a solution to their problem, I would not have had any.

Do you have any feature plans for Written/Unwritten?

The appreciation it receives right now is a total surprise and of course, I would like to see it selected at many other film festivals. Given his social component and the fact it is a film shot mostly in Romani language, I would be glad to also find out it is of good use to some NGO’s activities that work closely with Romani minorities, particularly the ones helping the Roma people get their identity cards.

Written/Unwritten has received three more awards at Cinemed Festival in Montpellier, as well as the award for Best Short Film at Trieste Film Festival.

The short film follows the story of a Roma family whose daughter got pregnant at a very young age. Things get even more complicated when a doctor asks them to sign some official papers and discovers several issues of paternity and identity. Being one step away from losing his daughter, Pardica takes action.

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.