Beta Cinema is to handle international sales on Familiar, the new film from Berlinale Golden Bear-winning director Călin Peter Netzer.
Familiar stars Romanian actor Emanuel Pârvu, known for films such as Graduation, Miracle and Tales From A Golden Age, as a movie director investigating the darkest secrets intoxicating his family.
Netzer wrote the script with the film’s main actress Iulia Lumânare and produced together with Oana Iancu through Parada Film, the company behind Romanian director Netzer’s 2013 Golden Bear winner Child’s Pose and his 2017 Silver Bear winner Ana, Mon Amour.
Beta Cinema will start preselling Familiar at the upcoming Cannes Market.
In the film, Pârvu plays Dragoș, a Romanian film director in his forties who decides to make a movie about his family’s emigration to Germany in the 80s, that followed his mother’s extramarital affair. Because the emigration happened under suspicious conditions, Dragoș investigates undercover, with help from his former girlfriend, Ilinca, played by Lumânare.
The collaboration brings the two closer together, but complicates things with his fiancée and leads to revelations about his family’s ties with the Secret Service. Trapped in his own story and with his fiancée announcing her pregnancy, Dragoș must make a decision that will impact the future of everyone involved.
Netzer’s first feature film Maria (2003) won the best actor and best actress prizes at Locarno, while Medal Of Honor (2009) was selected to more than 30 international festivals and awarded in Thessaloniki, Turin, Miami, Durres, Los Angeles and Zagreb. Child’s Pose (2013) was the first Romanian film to receive the Berlinale Golden Bear. Ana, Mon Amour won the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution in 2017.
“The film will be built with the thoroughness of a detective investigation,” said Netzer. “Using the present as a tool that makes the past intelligible, my main character Dragoș instinctively recreates the mise-en-scene of the past, recreating the love triangle his parents once had formed and that had led to the never reconciled disruption of the family. Familiar will be a complex story about our ever profound search for identity and truth.”
Tassilo Hallbauer, head of sales and acquisitions at Beta Cinema said: “We are very happy to continue our collaboration with Călin Peter Netzer and Parada Film after the enormous success we had with his previous films, not only at the festivals but also selling his films to more than 25 territories. In Familiar, Călin Peter Netzer shows his distinctive signature again, delivering an intimate yet rapturous drama in which the lead character tries to force the truth to come to light.”
Familiar’s cast is rounded out with Ana Ciontea, Adrian Titieni, Victoria Moraru and Vlad Ivanov next to Iulia Lumânare and Emanuel Pârvu.
Barbu Bălășoiu and Andrei Butică served as directors of photography, and Dana Bunescu is editing the film that currently is in postproduction.
Familiar is a Romania, France and Taiwan co-production. Cinema DeFacto, Gaïjin and Volos Films produced together with Parada Film, and support came from The Romanian Center of Cinematography, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), Taiwan’s International Co-funding Program (TICP), Aide aux Cinémas du Monde - Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée - Institut Français and Creative Europe MEDIA of the European Union.
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