Adrian Sitaru Has ‘Best Intentions’ for Sophomore Project

At thirty-nine, although he has made only one single feature film, Romanian filmmaker Adrian Sitaru is already internationally known. He won the Leopards of Tomorrow section of the 2007 Locarno International Film Festival with his short Waves (Valuri) and for his first feature – Hooked (Pescuit sportiv), he received the Special Jury Award and the Best Actress prize for Ioana Flora and Maria Dinulescu at the 2008 Thessaloniki Film Festival. Now, Adrian Sitaru is preparing his second feature.

From Love with Best Intentions tells the story of a 33-year-old man, named Alex, whose mother suffers a stroke. “Although his mother seems ok, Alex becomes more and more irrational, antsy and paranoiac. This happens because, from love, with best intentions, we’re getting ignorant, blind and starting to make mistakes.” explains the director.

Sitaru continues his collaboration director of photography Adrian Silişteanu and when asked about the visual imprint of the future film he mentioned that, “everything you can see on the screen is the imprint of many people. I usually talk to Silişteanu a lot about the concept I have in mind and then he tries his best to do what I imagined. I think both of us influence what the public see.”

When asked what his most influential films are, Adrian Sitaru provided us with this list of five classics: Andrei Tarkovski’s Stalker (1979), Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963), Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982), Andrei Tarkovski’s Solaris (1972) and Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996).

Hooked demonstrated that Sitaru is a true fan of POV shots. He will continue to use this technique because “this way, the viewers manage to see things through the characters eyes, unlike the classic movies when the public is just an observer from the exterior. The 3D does the same thing. Only that the POV technique is the cheapest way “to force” the spectators to share the same emotions with the characters, to be in the middle of the action.”

The cast has not yet been announced, but Bogdan Dumitrache (How I Celebrated the End of the World) is expected to take on the lead. Sitaru mentioned that he would love to work again with Adrian Titieni (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) and Clara Voda (Aurora).

From Love with Best Intentions will be a drama with a dark humour (perhaps a little absurd in portions), featuring some hilarious characters. Shooting will start on the 9th of September, and the producers will strategize a film festival circuit release before pegging a domestic release date. Producing we find Romanian HiFilm with Movie Partners in Motion Film (from France) and 4Proof Film (from Romania) as co-producers.