Malul Vânât / A River’s Gaze, the debut feature film by director Andreea Cristina Bortun and also the first Romanian project supported by Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan , as producer and financier, has been selected in the SMART 7 competition , a network of international festivals supported by the Creative Europe Programme. In Romania, it will be screened at TIFF, the festival being part of SMART 7.
Andreea Bortun talks below about the research work on this film and working with non-professional actors, met in the rural environment. And Sebastian Stan tells exclusively for Cultura la dub why he decided to get involved in the production of the film.
The Blue Shore is the first part of a trilogy about love in the countryside. The film is an anthropological drama that adopts a rare approach: the cast is made up of over 60% non-professional actors, met in the villages where Andreea Cristina Bortun conducted field documentation for six years (2017–2022).
“Thanks to an impressive effort by the entire team, the filming took place over four seasons, capturing the cycle of nature and rural life. The film explores the tense and yet touching dynamic between Lavinia and her 14-year-old son, Dani, in a village in southern Romania. The director talks about combining artistic elements with anthropological work. For me, using artistic research tools borrowed from anthropological fieldwork came at first as something intuitive. It seemed natural and necessary to take part and get to know the world that interested me closely. They bring themselves to the screen first and foremost, and that very real something remains over time. This aspect of hybridity between what may seem documentary, but which is at the same time a product of fiction, is something that interests me as part of my long-term artistic practice. The years of field research, the discussions with local women who shared their life stories with me, especially the defining encounter with one of them – a model for Lavinia’s interiority -, I hope will ensure a fair representation of today’s Romanian countryside, which, after all, is home to half of
Sebastian Stan for Cultura la dub: “There are many female directors in Romania who have something to say.”
The project encountered several obstacles, and in its support came the American actor of Romanian origin, Sebastian Stan. Winner of the Golden Globe and nominated for the Oscars last year, Sebastian Stan tells exclusively for Cultura la dub? why he decided to get involved in the production of the film Malul vân?t . Known for his close relationship with his mother, to whom he dedicated his Golden Globe win, Sebastian Stan was impressed by the script by Andreea Bortun, which shows the struggle of a mother to give her son a better life.
“I was very happy to have this opportunity to support a project by a young director, just starting out, her first feature film.I think it’s really important, if we can, to support these new voices. Often great careers are born from these first steps. Think of Martin Scorsese, who debuted with Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) thanks to the support of producer Roger Corman, paving the way for masterpieces like Taxi Driver later. I can’t say that my support was as decisive, as important, but I tried to be with him in this endeavor as much as I could. My roots are there, in Romania, even though I left when I was only 8 years old, and the first time I returned was only when I was 21. This long break made the return not only physical, but much more revealing, I could even say spiritual. Through the films I make and my chosen profession, I want to contribute in a way that is beyond me, that goes beyond my personal ego. That’s why I got involved in Andreea Bortun’s film, because there are many female directors in Romania who have something to say. And she had a story that was a little similar to my story with my mother, there are some small parallels there. And it wasn’t just that that attracted me to this project, but also the way it was made: the research carried out over 6 years, the filming done in the four seasons, something quite rare for a fiction feature film. Over 60% of the cast are non-professionals from the regions where the filming took place, ordinary people who were given a real chance to interpret what they experience day to day and not just in a feature film. Including one of the main actors, the boy, which I consider to be a brave bet for a debut director, not many take it on,” Sebastian Stan told Cultura la dub .
Category: Articles
Lavinia, a single mother, is trying to make a better living for her and her son, in a poor Romanian village. On her own terms. She’s impulsive, she miscalculates, she doesn’t know very well how to love. Dani, her 13 years old son however needs his mother more than ever during this period of his life, at the threshold between childhood and adolescence. In the course of the four seasons, Dani and Lavinia’s relationship is put to the test.
‘A River’s Gaze’ will have its World Premiere at the Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris in Lithuania on March 13. Tickets are available here. Sebastian is a producer and investor of the film.
EXCLUSIVE: After landing Scarlett Johansson for a new role in The Batman Part II, director Matt Reeves looks to have snagged one of her Avengers co-stars for another new role in the upcoming sequel. Sources tell Deadline Sebastian Stan is in talks to join the highly-anticipated DC Studios sequel in a role which is unknown. If a deal closes, he would join Robert Pattinson, who is set to reprise his role as the Caped Crusader in the upcoming sequel that Reeves is writing and directing.
DC Studios did not respond for request for comment.
The DC Studios pic is set to start production in the spring and will open in theaters on October 1, 2027. DC Co-bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran are producing.
Reeves’ The Batman was the first mega theatrical blockbuster for Warner Bros post-Covid after implementing a day-and-date release strategy on HBO Max. The movie starring Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz grossed $369.3 million at the domestic box office and $772M worldwide.
Stan is no stranger to the comic book pic after playing the role of the Winter Soldier for the past decade, most recently seen reprising it in the Marvel Studios pic Thunderbolts*.
He also was recently seen in his critically acclaimed role as Donald Trump in The Apprentice, which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the part.
She’s building her career outside her homeland, too, including starring in the Apple TV series Presumed Innocent and the A24 thriller A Different Man. She has The Governesses, another A24 film, with Lily-Rose Depp and Hoyeon; Somewhere Out There, from director Alexander Payne; and Fjord, a drama that she’ll lead alongside her A Different Man co-star Sebastian Stan.
[…]
On her craziest Hollywood story
Sebastian Stan and I crashed a wedding. I wasn’t famous at all at that point, though I had done The Worst Person in the World. I thought I would be invisible, but they were getting married because they both had seen that movie and fell in love over it. I was like their mascot.
We are very curious to see your new film, Fjord, which you made this year, in Norway, with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. What was it like working with international actors, how was it filming in Norway?
Filming itself with them was not very different from what we always did in a Romanian film with Romanian actors. What is very different is working with a team that has a little other habits.
You know that we, in Romania, are very hardworking in the field of cinema because we work against the clock and against the budget. We work 12 hours a day and we pull hard to finish as soon as possible, we don’t have such moments when we beat the plains on the plateau and relax when it’s not the case, we can’t.
While in Norway, we had to somehow go through this small period of knowing each other and, in the end, it was OK, but we met somewhere in the middle.
They work, as a rule, 8 hours and, in the end, our 12, we agreed to work somewhere at 10 hours, with pause, with everything, with roads, with everything, but after that the punctual way in which we worked with Sebastian and Renate was no different.
They lived with us, they rehearsed with us, as with the other actors. Sebastian was very generous and did not come with a publicist, agent, I know what, on the plateau, he did not have a special caravan and treatment. Sure, he had his peace of mind, which he needed, but which all the actors had.
And this has helped us advance into some kind of European-American project, but mostly European. That is, he admitted to work less on the American model that we have no way to replicate here and fold on our way of working.
Hollywood Reporter – The actor, commonly known for playing Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier in many Marvel films, earned his first Oscar nomination earlier this year.
Sebastian Stan is glad his career has unfolded the way it has.
In a recent appearance on Don Saladino’s Stronger Podcast, Stan, 43, opened up about why he feels he has to challenge himself and take on different roles.
“I have to try to offer something different than before. And I’ve never favored one role over another,” he said. “The Marvel stuff, I’ll always, till the end of time, [say it] really helped me grow as a person and helped me grow as an actor and it taught me relationships and Robert Downey [Jr.] and Scarlett [Johansson] and all these people I looked up and it was a business. It was a family and it gave me like a sense of belonging and it’s always there for that, but it was only the step one for me.”
However, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star noted that his transition to more critically acclaimed projects like I, Tonya, Pam & Tommy, A Different Man and The Apprentice needed to happen later in his life.
“This is where I’m finally now, and I’m lucky that it’s happening in my 40s, and it didn’t happen earlier for me because I look at these young guys like Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler — they’re doing stuff that I don’t think I could have done at their age. I just wasn’t there. I wasn’t caught up yet,” Stan explained. “I’m amazed at where they are at this point because I go, ‘Wow, where’s that guy going to be at 40?’ Imagine. But for me, I needed to grow.”
He also credited this to not being born in the United States, as Stan is from Romania. “There was there was a significant part of my youth that I had to spend to get Americanized or to fit in and really find my way in a different way,” the actor said. “But it’s really now that I feel I’m finally getting to do the stuff I’ve always wanted to do.”
At the 2024 Oscars, Stan received his first Oscar nomination — as well as a Golden Globe, BAFTA and Film Independent Spirit Awards nod — for playing President Donald Trump in The Apprentice. However, he lost to Adrien Brody for The Brutalist. The actor also nabbed Emmy, Critics’ Choice Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as rock star Tommy Lee in Pam & Tommy. For his role in this year’s A Different Man, Stan won his first Golden Globe, among other awards and noms.
For Mungiu, the film is not the exact mirror of reality, but a laboratory of truth – a space where you can test the limits of identity and empathy. The director points out that when you make art, from a peripheral culture, verticality, rigor and courage to show “what is not seen” become all the more emblematic. This is how Romanian artists are more appreciated abroad than they at home, where they are “tolerated, not respected”. Once again, with “Fjord”, his next feature film filmed in Norway, starring Sebastian Stan, the director escaped “from the Mioritic Paradigm of Deal-velale”.
“The Daily”: How was the experience of returning to Norway to film “Fjord”? How did you furnish the northern space, beyond cold and dark, in the footsteps of Bergman and Strindberg?
Cristian Mungiu: I felt great in Norway and, speaking of identity, I sometimes felt more “home” there than at home. People were fair, parolistic, positive, respectful, involved, but alike with a sense of humor, very communicative, if you knew how to melt the ice of the early politeness. We didn’t do anything special to understand ourselves – but we were ourselves respecting what we were detecting the politeness and habits of the place. But somehow, our directness, warmth and familiarity rushed communication, and at “Fjord” we worked as a team formed, say, from Moldovans, Bucharesters and Norwegians, Danes and so on.
The film cast in Norway means a major decorum change from the urban or rural landscapes in Romania. How did this frame affect the story?
“Fjord” is still a film very close to what I did before, even if it is spoken in another language and is filmed in another country. It’s a also realistic story, also inspired by our daily life, while reflecting on our differences in understanding society and the consequences that relocation to another mental space, when you come with your home ideas. The fact that we escaped from the Mioritic hill-wave paradigm did not majorly influence the structure of the film, because that paradigm is integrated into our DNA is not related to tourist landscapes. But yes, there is an extraordinary greatness of those places – which I hope I have captured in the film – and which speaks of how the landscape, distance, loneliness and population density also influence the worldview.
Sebastian Stan, rhythm and depthHow did Sebastian Stan’s presence influence in the film’s cast? Have you felt major differences in rhythm, working style or approach to the role on the part of it?
– No. We worked very well together, in the style in which we work here, in Europe, in Romania: in the plane-sequence, on a precise text, with a repeated and harsh choreography. Sebastian is a very gifted and subtle actor and gives a lot of strength and naturalness to the character he plays. He had no problem getting into the skin of a character as he can no more different than those he gives life in the series “Marvel”. But yes, from what I talked to him, our working styles (American and Romanian) are as different as it can be – much like the difference between a factory, with assembly line, and a creative boutique.
[…]
When will the film “Fjord” premiere?
We hope that “Fjord” will have its premiere next year, both on the international one and the premiers in the territories. The film is sold from the script phase in more than 60 countries.
Felipe Gálvez’s “The Settlers” was one of the true finds of Cannes 2023. The neo-western followed three horsemen hired by a wealthy landowner to clear his territory of its native population and open a route to the Atlantic.
Nastily rendered violence collides with Chile’s shameful past—one that seems to have been almost completely erased from the history books. It also cemented Gálvez as a talent to watch, making his sophomore effort highly anticipated.
Gálvez has now set his second feature film; it’s called “Impunity,” a spy thriller set in the late 1990s around the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Sebastian Stan will star, and since his character speaks Spanish for half the film, he is currently learning the language.
Based on Philippe Sands’ book “38 Londres Street,” the film centers on a former spy tasked with preventing the Chilean dictator’s escape after his arrest in London sparks international tensions. Pinochet was indicted for human rights abuses in Chile by former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón and was detained in 1998 at London Bridge Hospital. He remained under house arrest for 18 months before being released by the U.K. government in 2000.
A 2026 production star is expect for “Impunity.” No further casting details just yet.
Gálvez’s “The Settlers” competed in Un Certain Regard and for the Caméra d’Or at Cannes. The film won the FIPRESCI critics’ award, marking the first Chilean film to receive the prize.
As for Stan, formerly Bucky in the MCU, he’s coming off his Oscar-nominated turn as Donald Trump in “The Apprentice” and has now turned his attention to auteur-driven cinema, with upcoming films from Radu Jude, Cristian Mungiu, and Justin Kurzel.
Sebastian Stan is getting candid about his time with Marvel.
During a recent interview on the “Stronger Podcast,” Stan, who played Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, across seven Marvel films, said the blockbuster giant “really helped” him grow as a person and actor. However, now, at 43 years old, he’s trying to expand past the comic book action.
“I have to try to offer something different than before,” Stan said. “And I’ve never favored one role over another. The Marvel stuff, I’ll always, till the end of time, [feel it] really helped me grow as a person and helped me grow as an actor and it taught me relationships and [I worked with] Robert Downey [Jr.] and Scarlett [Johansson] and all these people I looked up to. It was a business. It was a family and it gave me a sense of belonging, and it’s always there for that, but it was only the step one for me.”
Stan added that he feels “lucky” that his more refined work in films like “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man” came later in life. He added he looks at “young guys like Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler” and sees them achieving things “I could not have done at their age.”
Due to his Romanian heritage, Stan also noted it took some time to fit in with the American movie industry.
“There was a significant part of my youth that I had to spend to get Americanized or to fit in and really find my way in a different way,” he explained. “But it’s really now that I feel I’m finally getting to do the stuff I’ve always wanted to do.”
2025 was a breakout year for Stan in terms of award recognition. His leading performance in “A Different Man” earned him a Golden Globe. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of Donald Trump in “The Apprentice.”
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Film Stage: I’m really fascinated to hear more about Fjörd, if you’re able to talk a bit about it today. It’s your first time filming in Norway and your first time working with big-name stars. Did you feel a change in your approach in any way?
Cristian Mungiu: Well, I think that it’s the same kind of cinema that I did before. And I don’t know––we will see––I hope it makes a difference in terms of interest from the spectators, to watch these talented people. I was not working within the star system before now, but I was happy to work with these people without having to change my way of making cinema. We got along quite well and I’m happy that I started with Sebastian, because he speaks some Romanian and he wished to speak Romanian in the film. I’m very curious to see what’s going to be the continuation of this once I move on and try to work with well-known actors who don’t speak Romanian. What will happen there? I’m really curious.
[…]
I’ve read that Fjörd will focus on two families, specifically around cultural differences regarding raising children. Will this topic of education be the central focus?
It doesn’t happen inside a school, but yes, these are always the institutions that are most important in society. Since I have this preoccupation with what we are passing to the next generation, there are children there, but it’s not so much about what school tells us; it’s about the difference between what school tells us and how people see what real life is. Because it’s not at all the same thing. What you tell your children can be very different, based on what education you got. You have to understand that they don’t live in the same kind of world that you lived in, so you have to adapt as a parent. For a parent, this means finding the right balance between the values you try to pass down and the freedom that you need to give to children, hoping that they will be wiser and more empathetic than we were.
Fjörd will be released in 2026 by NEON.