Paul Negoescu’s Men Of Deeds world premieres in competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival this month. Written by Radu Romaniuc and Oana Tudor, the film centres on a small-town police chief, played by Iulian Postelnicu, whose main concern is to build a cosy, comfortable life for himself. As soon as he decides to do his job and get involved in the life of his village, things start to go wrong.
The Romanian director was last in Sarajevo in 2012 with his short Horizon, which was also nominated for the Discovery Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
His feature debut A Month In Thailand premiered in International Critics’ Week at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, while his 2016 sophomore feature, the low-budget comedy Two Lottery Tickets, was a surprise hit at the Romanian box-office.
Men Of Deeds is a more arthouse proposition. The film is produced by Anamaria Antoci of Tangaj Production (Romania), Negoescu’s Papillon Film (Romania), Poli Angelova of Screening Emotions (Bulgaria), and Avanpost Production (Romania). International sales are handled by Germany’s Patra Spanaou Film.
How did this project begin?
A friend of mine came to me with this script, and I didn’t immediately agree to direct the film. I usually write my own scripts. This was set in the countryside, in the northern part of Romania, a place I didn’t know because I have lived all my life in Bucharest. So this universe was quite far from me. But when I read the script again and started to discuss it with the screenwriter, I realised that I liked the way the main character was constructed…someone who is disconnected from reality and from his emotions, but fate very suddenly brings his feet back on the ground. In this case, this happens very violently.
Your film Two Lottery Tickets was a hit in Romania. Did that help you with the making of this project?
They’re completely different projects. I was commissioned to make that film, and it happened to be a box office success and worked well in festivals. We didn’t intend or expect the film to be that successful; it was made with a very small budget, smaller even than for a standard short film. It was actually supposed to be a film for some acting students, for a private acting school. But it has nothing to do with this project. Of course, I would like as many people as possible to go watch Men Of Deeds, but it’s not the kind of film that can meet the interests of so many people.
Do you try to make some films that can make money, and others that are more personal to you? Or does it simply depend on what project comes to you?
I don’t think about it that much. When I’m making a film, I want to make a film that interests me. For example, with Two Lottery Tickets, my ambition was to make a film that didn’t cost very much and which would allow us to recoup the investment we’d made. With Men Of Deeds, I just wanted to make a film that I would like to watch, a film of my taste. For each film, I have different goals. But I definitely want to make films that I like.
What was the most challenging part of making the film?
It was very difficult to fit everything in the schedule we had, because our budget only afforded us 23 days of shooting and we had a lot of problems with the weather. It would start raining, then it would be sunny, then windy, then raining again. We had to wait for the weather a lot, because we had a lot of exterior scenes. We lost a day because of the weather, and had to do everything in 22 days. We put a lot of effort into combining the scenes to allow us to shoot everything. That was the most difficult part: I don’t remember if we ever shot an exterior scene in chronological order.
What are you working on now?
Actually, I’m working on a sequel to Two Lottery Tickets! We had a great time making it and it was a success. Now my ambition is to see if we can repeat the success, to see whether it was only down to chance or if we also contributed to it, too.
Will you be making it with a bigger budget?
We’ll try to make it as cheap as possible because we want to use the same recipe of production. We don’t want to involve state money, we will make it only with private sponsorship. But shooting expenses are much higher now than they were seven years ago when we shot the first film. They’re at least three or four times higher. Everything is more expensive. So, the budget will be bigger but we will shoot in the same guerilla style, with low budget equipment, few crew members and cheap locations.
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