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 .
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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.
There are 1 new UHQ/Untagged photo added and it’s the first look photo still from ‘Fjord’. Click the link below, enjoy.
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.
I found a short interview of Sebastian talking about ‘Pam & Tommy‘ with Lily James. I’ve added screencaps to the gallery and a video of the interview below. Enjoy.
There are 4 new UHQ/Untagged photos added. Two from ‘True Grit’ After Party in 2010 and two from Chuck Zlotnick on instagram.
Film Projects > Thunderbolts (2024) >Production Stills
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.
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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.
Romanian filmmaker Andreea Cristina Bor?un is prepping a feature film to follow on the heels of her anticipated debut, “A River’s Gaze,” a Sebastian Stan-produced drama that’s expected to land a top-shelf festival premiere next year. Bor?un is pitching her latest project in the Crossroads Co-Production Forum of the Thessaloniki Film Festival’s industry arm, Agora, which takes place Nov. 2 – 6.
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.
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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.