“Ana, mon amour”, the national premiere with a Silver Bear from the Berlinale

    After having received the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2013 Berlinale, the Child`s Pose / Poziția copilului,Călin Peter Netzer`s latest feature film had a premiere that has been long waited by the film critics and by the large audiences.
     The title, Ana, mon amourresembles the title of the novel ”Luminița, mon amour”, written by Paul Cezar Bădescu, the point where the story started from. Both of them refer to Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), the film directed by Alain Resnais, based on a screenplay written by Marguerite Duras. Here we also have a love story, but in a different key. The screenplay was written by Paul Cezar Bădescu, Călin Netzer and Iulia Lumânare and it focuses on the development of the relationship between Ana and Toma.
     She is neurotic and fragile, has panic attacks and dark circles around her eyes. He is a young journalist, full of energy and a stable comfort for the woman he loves. Both of them have troubled families, with tensions and crises, which mainly explains their own evolution as people. With the years passing, Ana looks younger and younger and more self-collected, while Toma seems to get older and more heavy-laden, as if he had taken over all the negative psychological burden. In the interview of the week, Diana Cavallioti told us about the difficult part of Ana.

The entire crew (director, screenwriters,actors) attended some psychotherapy sessions, as part of their preparing for the intensity and the truthfulness required bythis project. Călin Netzer knew they needed a special training for this story.

Dana Bunescu, the film editor who also signed the sound design, was in the center of attention thanks to the Silver Bear that the film received for its outstanding artistic contribution. Being very modest, as we know her, Dana told us that she hid the Bear among some books and that she went back to work, in order to get out of the state of utmost surprise that the awards ceremony brought upon her, when Paul Verhoeven gave her the statue.

Because of the explicit sex and drug scenes, Ana, mon amour was rated +18, which is quite unusual for a Romanian film. The challenge of the debutant Mircea Postelnicu was all the bigger.

For Vlad Ivanov this is the second time he works with Călin Peter Netzer, after The Child`s Pose / Poziția copilului.

The process of writing the screenplay was made in more stages. The first draft was written by Cezar Paul Bădescu, the author of the adapted novel together with Călin Peter Netzer.

The second stage of writing the screenplay was CălinNetzer`s collaboration with Iulia Lumânare, who was also the casting director and who also played a supporting role, that of a gynecologist who gets to develop a special relationship with Ana. This last stage of working on the screenplay included also the cinematographer Andrei Butică and the editor Dana Bunescu, who knew what part of this puzzle would be shot and the placing of each of them. Ana, mon amour will be out in the cinemas starting with the 3rd of March 2017, it is produced by Oana Iancu for Parada Film and it is distributed by Freeman Entertainement.