Nightpractice, the recipient of the Best Romanian short film Award as part of the ANONIMUL 2023

The new wave of Romanian cinema, going from strength to strength

Corina Sabău, 30.09.2023, 14:00

The Audience award for the Best Short film as part of
the ANONIMUL 2023 International Independent Film Festival went to Nightpractice,
a production by Bogdan Alecsandru. Initially, more than 100 films were entered the
short film competition. For the final competition, film critic Ionut Mares selected
12 productions, most of which being signed by well-established names in the
Romanian filmmaking industry. The production by Bogdan Alecsandru was also shortlisted
for the Romanian Film Days competition as part of TIFF (Transylvania International
Film Festival) with the selection including some of the best Romanian recent
films.

Bogdan Alecsandru has recently earned his Master’s in Film
directing with the I.L Caragiale National Film and Drama University in Bucharest.
He participated for the second time around in the Anonimul’s short film
competition. In 2022 he was in Sfântu Gheorghe, the locality hosting the
festival each year, with his first short film, Our House.

We sat down and spoke
to Bogdan Alecsandru about the topic of his film and about the reactions of the
audience of Anonimul.

I have
taken part in Anonimul for the 2nd year in a row, in the short film
competition, and it is also the 2nd year when the festival as such
is very special and very specific. I met people who booked their tickets months
in advance, so they can take part in the festival, whose venue we all know is in
a rather isolated place. There isn’t very much to do in Sfântu Gheorghe and it
is extraordinary, people gathering there to watch movies, hence the very special
atmosphere. I also turned up with my film and I was so happy I got there. For
me, it is very important to get in touch with the audience we have, a very
special and extremely dedicated audience. Actually, this award, the audience’s
award goes to the young filmmakers through voting, physically, as well as
online, and, for me, that is a formative experience, I daresay. As part of the
festival, every short
film enjoys two screenings. One of them also has a Q & A section and that is
actually the only time when you sit before your audience and have a direct
interaction with them. The reactions seemed quite enthusiastic, to me, and I
was happy about it as I wanted to make a short film meant to be quite audience-friendly,
with horror- like elements, even with thriller elements, I daresay, in the most
common acceptance of the word. That is why I expected my film to enjoy
appreciation, yet I did not expect this award. Because, even if it is rather a pop
film, rather audience-oriented, it has nonetheless a quite sensitive topic, for
Romania, the relation between two people of the same sex.

Bogdan Alecsandru expressed
his interest mainly in queer cinema, which in Romania can still be viewed as
some sort of niche cinema. Besides, he takes his time to make his debut with a
feature film as, for the time being, he is passionate about the short genre which
he considers he did not explore enough.

In Romania,
queer cinema is rather scarcely represented, we’re speaking about films telling
stories focusing on same-sex relations. Notwithstanding, this kind of cinema had
been tackled before, yet the first Romanian queer film had a tardier release,
in 2006, when Tudor Giurgiu made Love Sick. I believe there are very many
stories of this kind, untold, or which did not enjoy the opportunity of being
told, until recently, and I am interested to make the topic known to the audiences,
to that effect. Right now I am interested in this area of the short film, which
can definitely be viewed as an exercise or as some sort of practice. Yet I view the short film as a
genre n itself, a very precious one, so in the coming years, at least, I intend
to explore its specificity. Which means I avoid making short films that rather look
like a beginning or a demo for a feature film. And that, for the time being, at
least. Later on, I do not know what I will do as I am still quite young and I
change my focus rather fast. Now, speaking about Romanian cinema, it seems to
be it has seen auspicious moments for some time now and, when at Anonimul, I
was really happy to find myself included in a selection mostly made of women
filmmakers. Many of those women filmmakers are friends of mine and I am happy
for their career. I also find it a good thing, the fact that commercial films
are on the rise, the fact that this is a growing phenomenon. What I have in mind
are such films as Teambuilding, whose box office in theatres was rather high, which
doesn’t happen very often in the case of Romanian movies. I find that a good
thing also because this genre could change Romanians’ perspective on Romanian
cinema a little bit, but, obviously, that
is a good thing also from a commercial perspective. I think a functional
filmmaking industry should have both film genres, the art and the commercial
films .

On the cast for Nightpractice
are Andrei Giurgea, Tiberius Zavelea, Gabriel Spahiu, Marc Titieni, Rareș
Ularu, Horațiu Băcilă, Vlad Tudoran, Robi Brage, Antonio-Daniel Petrica.