The crew of the film ‘Horia’, which will be shown as part of the new FEST section FEST 52, introduced itself to the journalists.
Along with director Ana-Maria Comănescu, actors Vladimir Țeca, who plays the title role, and his colleague Robert Onofrei, as well as Nikolina Vučetić Zečević, co -producer, presented the co-production of Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia.
According to the director Comănescu, the idea for the film ‘Horia’ arose a long time ago, andwith a fellow co-writer, she was supposed to work on a story about a fifty year-old man who sets out on a journey on a motorcycle.
‘I liked that moment of traveling all over Romania on an old motorbike in search of love and when the colleague I was working with quit the project I could not stop thinking about this story, which ended up being a completely different scenario. This turned into a coming-of-age film instead, in which the most important moment is not the journey, but how it changes the main character, Horia, and what he learns,’ she said.
According to Comănescu, her hero starts his journey as a boy, yet at the end of the film he becomes a mature young man, and, along with Horia, a female character - Stela, who helps the protagonist on his way of growing up - plays an important role in this film. As the director points out, she was lucky to find actress Angelina Pavel, who inspired her to create a character with characteristics similar to this actress. Therefore, Stela became less quiet and less shy yet more fun.The lead actor Vladimir Țeca played his first role in this film and after that he started studying acting, while his colleague Robert Onofrei is a young talent at the beginning of his career. ‘Working with Ana-Maria was beyond all expectations for me, we clicked right away, even during the casting. When I read the script, I knew it was a role tailored-made for me,’ said
Onofrei about his experience on this film.
According to the co-producer Nikolina Vučetić Zečević, ‘Horia’ is a ‘lovely project’ and one of the few that she has worked on lately that does not talk about violence, corruption or any other socially engaged topic, but is a story about growing up. As Janja Lončar stated, six musicians did the music for this film, and the entire post production was done in Belgrade.
The film will have a cinema release in Romania from 10 April, it was shown at the festival in Tallinn, and it also premiered at the Autumn Previews section of the Cannes in Bucharest festival. Th
e audience will be able to see it at FEST on 25 February (Cineplexx Galerija, Hall 5, 10 p.m.), 26 February (Cineplexx Galerija, Hall 5, 2.30 p.m.) and 27 February (MTS Hall, Hall 6, 4.30 p.m.).
