Chisu’s WebSiteStory is Uploaded at Hamburg FilmFest

Dan Chişu’s first feature film has been selected for this year’s FilmFest Hamburg, in the Eurovisuell section. A festival which features several heavyweight European films included the low budget drma meant to wake up adults to the new reality of the internets. WebSiteStory follows an 18-year-old girl, named Laura, who spends a night in a club with her friend Mira. During the night, she gets drunk and smokes her first joint. Next day in the morning, Laura can’t remember anything and finds out that her friend is dead. Logically, she wants to know what happened to Mira and starts to look out through Mira’s YouTube posts, hoping she discovers the truth. She wants to avenge Mira‘s death no matter what. And, in the end, her story of revenge returns to the internet, the place where it all began.

WebSiteStory is just the story of a premeditated murder out of desire for revenge and yet committed by accident. It is a story about admitting the guilt and about the insecurities that guilt can give you. The rest is easy and relatively like any post on the net.

One who’s familiar with Romanian cinema most probably will discover that WebSiteStory is not like anything else made by a Romanian director.The entire film was shot during only 12 days, in Bucharest, and it was made with a budget of 120.000 euros. It didn’t work from a screenplay and the actors were mostly amateurs. They were gathered in a house for six days, in order to get to know each other and to build their characters. All they received from Chişu was a four-page description of their character and nothing else.

This is also the first Romanian feature film shot with a RED Camera. It’s mostly an experiment to which several well-known actors, like Dragoş Bucur, Florin Piersic Junior, Şerban Ionescu or Lia Bugnar, accepted to contribute.

These days, Dan Chişu is shooting his third feature: Şi caii sunt verzi pe pereţi. „The film follows the parallel stories of some young and adults, both led by the hope of becoming rich without work” declared the director. The cast includes young actors like Ionuţ Vişan and Anca Florescu, but also some experienced actors: Adrian Titieni, Tudor Smoleanu, Nicodim Ungureanu, Oxana Moravec, Constantin Ghenescu, Coca Blos and Oreste Scarlat Teodorescu. Wearing the producer’s hats we have Dan Chişu and Giuliano Doman, while DaKINO Production, Tandem Film and Panalight are co-producers.