Biography

September 7, 1960 · Bucharest, Romania

His father is the film historian and critic Tudor Caranfil.

[on the light-hearted tone of Closer to the Moon (2014)] Well, it was written like this from the beginning. This is my way of telling stories, this is my tone. And I do not know whether it's right or wrong but I can only be myself. People, mostly Romanians, who object to this tone saying I have no right to speak about communists in such light colours. And they claim that they lived over those dreadful years and I should, I have the moral obligation, to treat it in a dark tone. And I said: Why? Who is obliging me to do that? I lived through those years and I was young at the time and I know I had fun despite the regime. I loved despite the regime. I drank despite the regime and lived a life in other way. So let other people do the trial of the Communist regime. I just want to tell stories that happened in those times because I knew at the time that if we would, we the filmmakers, be given a possibility to make realistic movies of what was happening around us, the material that was around us was so rich, so wonderful, so absurd, so tragic and burlesque at the same time, that we could become the best filmmakers in the world because we were dealing with the best material. [2014]

[on the Romanian New Wave] My films are very different from theirs. They have a totally different approach to cinema than I have. I am story oriented, they are not. I create structures, they create slices of life. I work with music, they avoid music. I create twists and turns, they avoid that. [2014]

[on Philanthropique (2002)] I remember it was a combination of two failed story attempts and putting them together was the best way to make them work. One was the story of a couple that goes to a restaurant, can't pay the bill and they become a waiter's hostages. The other one was the story of a guy who gets out of prison and starts making texts for beggars and controlling them. For a while, I was trying to work on them separately. And one day, I put them together, mixes them and it worked. This is how "Filantropica" came to life. (...) I wanted to make a fairy tale and this is why the film starts with 'Once upon a time'. For that, I thought about Charles Dickens and about "The Three Penny Opera" by Bertolt Brecht. So I wanted to have this type of distance from the reality because I don't much care about reality. I think I am personally richer than reality. [2014]

The first film that really put Romania on the world map was La mort de Dante Lazarescu (2005). [2014]

[on his aesthetics] I always try to manipulate with my movies. I think this is the main reason artists create. Not to explain the world - this is the philosophers' job; not to improve the world - this is the politicians' job but to lie beautifully and this is why I use every bit of film ingredients I can. I use music for example. Most of my [Romanian] colleagues don't. They think music is manipulative. So what? It should be. And it fits Film in general. This is why I use editing. I think the camera should be in different places. That's why we make movies and we don't stick to reality. In reality, we have one camera, one angle with just our own angle and it's a POV and that's all. Movies allow us to do more. So why not use that? [2014]