Depardieu and Keitel Have a Date with ‘Death’

Gerard Depardieu and Harvey Keitel will be heading to Romania to play in an adaptation of Titus Popovici novel Moartea lui Ip (The Ip’s Death) – the feature will be known as So I Say. In the director’s chair we find Bogdan Dumitrescu Dreyer, whose previous work includes Never Enough (2004), The Last Station (1998) and also Thalassa, Thalassa (1993) – the Tiger Award winner at Rotterdam Film Festival. 

The French actor plays the lead character in the project which will be filmed at Sighişoara, Romania, starting with August 22nd. Apart from Keitel, the film will feature Romanian actors Dorel Vişan, Alexandru Bindea, Gabriel Spahiu, Bogdan Iancu, Adina Cartianu and Mihai Constantin. A previous adaptation of Popovici novel was made by Sergiu Nicolaescu, back in 1972, which was known as Then I Sentenced Them All To Death.

Written by Piero de Bernardi (co-writer of Sergio Leone’s 1984 film, Once Upon a Time in America) and Anusavan Salamanian (sound-engineer of the first adaptation of Popovici novel and also co-writer of Ultima noapte de dragoste both movies directed by Sergiu Nicolaescu), this will be filmed in French.

The action is set somewhere in Transylvania, during the Second World War. When a German soldier is found dead near the village, the Nazis threaten to kill all the people unless the local authorities will find the guilty one till the morning after. Since there is no way to find the murderer, the people think of Ipu’s, the madman of the village, whom they will promise a funeral like a hero if he will accept to die at their place.

So I Say is working from a budget of over 2.5 millions euros and is being produced by Romanian company Tandem Film Production, with Harbour Entertainment Gmbh (from Germany) and CDP Productions (from France) as co-producers. The film is looking towards a release same time next year.