Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #130. Heidi – Catalin Mitulescu

Heidi

A prominent member of the Romanian New Wave, Catalin Mitulescu’s fourth feature will be Heidi, which he self-produced through Strada Film. In development since 2014, production took place back in April (see some excerpts of the production here). Mitulescu reunites with DP Marius Panduru, who lensed his first two features (as well as several of Radu Jude’s titles plus Corenliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective). The project stars Gheorghe Visu (Dogs, 2016), Catalina Mihai, Florin Zamfirescu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Alex Conovaru and Octav Costin. Mitulescu won the Palme d’Or for his 2004 short film Traffic, while his 2006 film The Way I Spent the End of the World and 2011’s Loverboy premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes. His last feature, 2016’s By the Rails, premiered in Karlovy Vary.

Gist: Co-written by Mitulescu and Radu Aldulescu (of Lucian Pintilie’s Next Stop Paradise, 1998), Visu stars as a policeman verging on retirement who is given the assignment of locating a girl willing to testify in an organized crime case relating to human trafficking.

Release Date/Prediction: Heidi was set to be completed with post-production in late 2018. We expect Berlin to be a strong possibility for Mitulescu, who could potentially compete for his first Golden Bear.