Documentary
(North American Premiere
2009 Romania / France / Belgium / Croatia 108 MIN 35mm)
Directors: Melissa de Raaf, Răzvan Rădulescu
Screenwriters: Melissa de Raaf, Răzvan Rădulescu
Producers: Ada Solomon
Director of Photography: Tudor Lucaciu
Editor: Dana Bunescu
Cast: Ozana Oancea, Vasile Mentzel, Ileana Cernat, Adina Andrei, Serban Georgevici
In a collaboration unique in Romania’s burgeoning cinema, Răzvan Rădulescu (from Romania) and Melissa de Raaf (from the Netherlands) have co-written and directed a simple yet rich story confined to a single day. It dawns for Felicia (Ozana Oancea) with expectations that her sister will drive her to the Bucharest airport for her flight to Amsterdam, where Felicia has lived with her husband and son for years. The sister flakes out, triggering a chain of frustrating complications that conspire to keep Felicia waiting with her excessively protective yet well-intentioned mother (Ileana Cernat) at the airport. Radulescu, who has worked as a writer with Cristi Puiu, Radu Muntean and Cristian Mungiu, says that he and de Raaf’s goal was “to shape the day of Felicia’s departure into a hallmark for her life condition.” Even by the extraordinarily high standard of Romanian film acting, Oancea and Cernat attain rare levels of emotional honesty.
Biography
Răzvan Rădulescu
Writer and filmmaker Rădulescu won the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize for his debut novel The Life and Deeds of Elijah Cazane (1997). His screenplays with Cristi Puiu include GOODS AND MONEY (2001), FEED FOR SMALL FRY (2004), OFFSET (2004) and THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (2005).
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