Actress  Ioana Bugarin

Last year, at the Transylvania International Film Festival, the actress Ioana Bugarin was awarded the Alex. Leo Șerban scholarship

Corina Sabău, 24.09.2022, 13:26

Last year, on the stage of TIFF (Transylvania International Film Festival), the actress Ioana Bugarin was awarded the Alex. Leo Șerban scholarship for the roles in the films Mia misses her revenge (directed by Bogdan Theodor Olteanu) and Otto the Barbarian (directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu). This year, at the Gopo Awards, Ioana Bugarin was nominated twice for her roles in the same films: for the role of Mia in the film Mia misses her revenge, she was nominated for the category of best actress in a leading role, and for the role of Laura in the film Otto the Barbarian, in the best supporting actress category.

Also this year, Ioana Bugarin returned to the big screen, playing the main role in the film Miracle, directed by Bogdan George Apetri, winner of the Award for the best feature film at TIFF, in the Romanian Film Days section, and praised in the American press after its release. Ioana Bugarin also impressed thanks to her performance in the recently released HBO series, RUXX. At only 25 years old, Ioana Bugarin has a career in cinematography, but she can also be seen on stage, at the Odeon Theatre, where she was hired after playing the role of Ophelia in the play Hamlet, directed by Dragoș Galgoțiu.

At the Odeon Theatre, Ioana Bugarin also played roles in Juliet without Romeo, directed by Bogdan Teodor Olteanu, Henry IV, directed by Vlad Cristache and Persona by Radu Nica. The successful international co-production Itineraries. One day, the world will change, directed by Eugen Jebeleanu, whose cast includes Ioana Bugarin, was awarded the UNITER 2020 award for best director and declared by Romanian theater critics the show of the year 2019.

We spoke to Ioana Bugarin about her most recent roles, the role played by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in her formation and how she chooses her projects. We also talked about the awards received, always pleasant, but never an end in itself. An emotional moment, says the actress, was last year, when at TIFF she was awarded the Alex. Leo Şerban scholarship, initiated in memory of one of the most appreciated film critics in our country.

It was a great honor, I hadn’t expected it at all. I remember even now, the organizers of the TIFF Gala sending me this invitation to participate, and me telling them I had no reason to go. They kept sending me messages and reiterating the invitation, and I would reply the same, that I had no reason to come to the Gala. But when I got there things started to happen. But I never focused on that, I never made it a goal to win awards. Not when I started my career, not when I chose a project. I want to say that for me the most important thing has always been to find the right roles, that would represent and incite me. Of course, every human being needs validation, and when you get it, it’s wonderful, it’s incredible when you happen to receive recognition, but for me, as I said, this has never been the goal.

In the feature films Mia misses her revenge (directed by Bogdan Theodor Olteanu) and Miracle (directed by Bogdan George Apetri), Ioana Bugarin plays the leading part, succeeding to impersonate two extremely different characters. Mia is a young actress, who talks about the condition of women in the urban environment and the importance of her autonomy, while Cristina Tofan is attracted, at least apparently, to life in the monastery, where she wants to find herself. The role of Laura in Oto, the Barbarian (directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu), a depressed teenager who eventually commits suicide, was also a challenge. Ioana Bugarin:

I think I was very lucky and somehow I happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was certainly a bit of luck, but all the roles that I ended up playing, I got after some castings. Then, as I started acting, the directors understood the direction I was interested in as an artist, and I was really asked to play parts that I also think suit me. Somehow it became clearer to me as I grew up that I was interested in certain things. Gender discrimination is one of these things, discrimination that sometimes manifests itself in a rather subtle form. Some feminist authors that I discovered while I was studying in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art also helped me to define myself, so I also acquired a vocabulary for the things that concerned me but that I didn’t know how to express. The way we talk about women and the way we present them is very important, culture has this power to shape us, to change a little the way we see the world. That’s why it has always been important for me to choose stories that represent me in order to be able to fully dedicate myself to them. And I can say with gratitude that so far this has happened.

The most recent show in which Ioana Bugarin plays is Sara/Mara (a kind of comedy with vloggers), an Apollo 111 and Ideo Ideis production, directed by Bogdan Theodor Olteanu. The cast of the show also includes Mădălina Stoica, Alexandru Ion, Ramona Niculae and Carol Ionescu. (MI)