Celebrated Romanian writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu has confirmed his next film will be shot in the French Basque Country, with a proposed autumn 2025 start date. Speaking during a Visions du Reel masterclass, the director of 2019’s The Whistlers confirmed that the script is finished, and casting is in progress.
Porumboiu has been working on the project for over three years and revealed that it would be a new genre for him: an adventure with musical elements. He also confirmed that the film, which will be produced by Juliette Schramek of Italy’s Lumen Films, was being finalised structurally.
The New Wave auteur’s debut 12:08 East Of Bucharest took the Camera D’Or for best first feature in Cannes in 2006, while his 2009 follow-up Police, Adjective won the festival’s Jury Prize. The comically complex The Whistlers, which shot between the Canary Island of La Gomera and Romania, played in Competition, was sold by mk2 Films and picked up for the US by Magnolia. Porumboiu explained that each film is “an economy in itself, its own ecosystem.”
“With The Whistlers you had bigger companies with more money, so there are other rules, other expectations,” said Porumboiu, who has also made two low-budget documentaries on football (2018’s Absolute Football and 2014’s The Second Game), which have found devoted cult followings.
“As a director, I take the attitude that the budget is there and I need to be creative with,” he noted. “I’m perfectly aware we have to find solutions, and that’s part of our job. You start out with a set number of days in mind and if you don’t get the numbers you want, that’s all part of the filmmaking process. Something creative can come of that.”
Known for his devotion to language and an idiosyncratic comedic touch, Porumboiu is a native of Vaslui in Eastern Romania and a graduate of Bucharest’s UNATC. He’s a compatriot of fellow New Wave auteurs Cristi Puiu and Radu Jude, whose works also feature black humour resulting from the country’s Communist past. Such films have been acclaimed overseas while causing confusion at home due to their portrayal of Romania in a starker light than the deposed regime’s propaganda materials. Now, Porumboiu says, he is optimistic about the industry at home.
“12:08 was self-funded by my family,” he revealed. “When I graduated, very few films were being made. I thought if in my entire life I managed to produce one or two films that would be great. All my childhood friends made fun of me, asking if I’d do porn when I graduated because how else would I make a film? But after us, after the New Wave, more popular films are being made right now in Romania which are hugely successful. YouTube influencers bring a lot of people into the cinemas, and I do think this is a very positive thing. The current landscape is quite rich now.”
Born in 1975, Porumboiu emerged from behind the Iron Curtain in the aftermath of the Romanian revolution and 1989 execution of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescus, but is now working in a world where the right-wing is finding some favour again – including in his home country.
“When you have a revolution, you think everything is going to change, but I think that’s a rather romanticised version of the word,” he said. “People expect there to be a change overnight, but is that really the case? There is a point in time where nothing will be the same again.
“For me film is a language and when I make a film I try to pull a universal string,” he continued. “The best films are the ones that achieve that. It does bother me a little when the films are interpreted just on a political basis, left or right. I’m not interested in that.”
In a world with shortening attention spans, Porumboiu remains the kind of director who is happy to work on a small scale and trust his audience.
”I demand attention of course,” he noted. “But I’m not the first to do that. I’m coming from a tradition. The audience is like a partner for me. I’m pretty sure that in every theatre in the world you will have people that have seen more cinema than me and I respect that.”
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