Balaur

For me, this film was about being honest with oneself. There are few people really alive in this world. The majority cling to to beliefs and rules for the wrong reasons, but not out of sincere yearning. We are able to sacrifice anything for these beliefs because we are very insecure and the search for the pure truth or the true self gives us headaches. The discussions at the dinner table were the most eloquent in this sense. There was laughter at these scenes, although they were certainly not intended for humor, but they created this reaction because they overlap some cultural stereotypes, which once you see them, you can't help but make fun of them. If you are the type who wants to learn a lesson after watching a film, I suspect that what remains with you after this film is that the sedimented frustrations due to customs, restrictions and hypocrisy can lead to very dark situations, most likely with many collateral victims. Zavatos.

A Romanian thriller of great emotional intensity, inspired by a real and difficult story. It doesn't even matter that it takes place in a Romanian city. It could be from anywhere. This is excellent. It does not present the gloomy universe like the average Romanian. I was hugely impressed by the young actor Sergiu Smerea (Iuliu, the 16-year-old). Strange, passionate, able to look into the depth of another person, but also into the abyss of a world where people play their own lives inauthentically, but conforming. Very good Mãlina Manovici (Ecaterina, religion teacher). She embodies a domesticated shadow, passionately-dangerously awakened, if only for a moment, to a life that is not allowed to it. Very good Alexandru Papadopol (the priest Dragos). He is the born domesticated on whom life plays a tragic farce. The film is in the previews stage (TIFF, Sibiu an others). From September, it will take the path of big or small screens. Needless to say, I think you're missing out if you don't experience this cinematic experience. Mihaela Miroiu.

In Romanian folklore, the Balaur is a many-headed dragon that symbolises Evil to be overcome by the hero of the story. In the film, this translates to a dark study of the impasse within the religious teacher Ecaterina. She believes that every person is free to choose, but is herself unhappy with her life as the wife of the local priest. Wrestling with the question of whether freedom is compatible with faith, Ecaterina finds herself attracted to one of her pupils, the sixteen-year-old Iuliu, who falls hopelessly in love with her. Their initial little secrets and lies threaten to take on monstrous proportions. For his first feature film, which can rely on strong performances, director Octav Chelaru himself wrote an intriguing screenplay. Those familiar with Romanian cinema of the past two decades know that it rarely disappoints.

The fear of infidelity is the theme of Balaur (2021), based on a real from Piatra Neamt, where a religion teacher, wife of a priest, was involved in a public scandal after a relationship with one of her students. Because Transilvania Film Festival offers this extraordinary opportunity to meet the makers of a film immediately after the screening, Balaur (2021) seemed to me an even more impressive directorial debut listening to the way Octav Chelaru argued his cinematic choices and seeing the unity of his team of actors including Alexandru Papadopol, Sergiu Smerea and Mãlina Manovici, protagonists who, I have no doubt, will receive some awards for this interpretation. Liana Alexandru.

Tonight I saw Octav Chelaru's debut feature film, which is based on (or rather is inspired by) a real love story with a tragic ending, which happened some years ago, between a priest's wife and a high school student. The story ended with the suicide of the young man.

I won't narrate the movie here, just a few highlights.

The film has all the characteristics of the low-budget Romanian film, which relies a lot on the psychological mindset of the characters, in order to impress the audience! With all the good and the bad that derives from here!

The film has a good flow, it is not preaching anything and it's quite honest, not forcing the viewer towards limited interpretations.

I still don't know what to say about how believable the characters are presented. Maybe because of my familiarity with the setting, maybe because of the exceptionality of the story.

Dialogues are, most often, natural; sometimes slightly touched by hysteria, as in all Romanian films. Or maybe it's just my feeling...

All in all, it is not an anti-clerical film at all! On the contrary! Beyond some awkwardness, the church, the priesthood, the priest's family are approached very respectfully!

It's a film about wounded and unfulfilled eros, maybe also about a confused past of a woman, maybe incapable of happiness, maybe forced to live a life that didn't make her happy!

But more than that, I think it's about the devastating effect that migration and the lack of family love has on children and teenagers!

The conclusion drawn by me, let's call it "moral conclusion", is that man without love is nothing and tends towards self-destruction. The lack of love places the soul in an entropic desire, which, at best, destroys destinies, and at worst, puts the equal sign between life and death!

I say it's a movie worth seeing!