Foreign Film Oscar 2012: Romania Selects Marian Crisan’s Morgen

While several countries are still deliberating which film will represent them for the upcoming Foreign Films category at the Oscars, the Romanian National Center for Cinematography have announced their pic in Marian Crisan’s Morgen. Scripted by Crisan and featuring Yalcin Yilmaz and Andras Hathazi, is about a man, Nelu (Hathazi), who lives near Romanian-Hungarian border, who works as a supermarket security guard and who just likes fishing. One day, though, he meets an illegal Kurdish immigrant and he has to decide whether to help him pass the border or not.

Morgen grabbed four awards at last year Locarno Film Festival: Special Jury Prize, Third Prize of the Junior Jury Awards, Eucumenical Prize and FICC/IFFS Prize. Crisan’s film also received Best Director and Best Actor (ex aequo – Andras Hathazi and Yilmaz Yalcin) at Thessaloniki Film Festival, while at the 3rd edition of CinEast festival, Morgen won The Grand Prix the Prix du Public. April 2011 brought a new award for Marian Crisan, when was announced the winner of the Best Director category at the 11th edition of goEast Film Festival.

The jury that selected Morgen as a Romanian entry for Academy Awards 2012 included Eugenia Vodă (film critic), Magda Mihăilescu (film critic), Cristina Corciovescu (film critic), Mihai Chirilov (film critic), Dana Duma (film critic), Dinu Tănase (director of photography) and Eugen Athanasiu (film critic). They had to choose from 16 eligible movies. Among those 16 films were also Cristi Puiu’s Aurora, Bogdan Apetri’s Periferic/Outbound and Medal of Honor by Călin Netzer. Last year Romanian proposal for the Oscar’s Best Foreign Film category was Florin Serban’s If I Want to Whistle I Whistle.