The director
Corneliu Porumboiu is shooting for –
his fifth fiction feature film,
Gomera, in Spain. The actors Agustí Villaronga, Cristóbal Pinto, Antonio Buíl and Kiko Correa join the other actors that are part of the project.
Agustí Villaronga, who received the Silver Bear for Best Director for the film
El Mar at the 2000 Berlinale and three Goya trophies, was surprised that a Romanian director invited him to be an actor in his film. “I decided to do it
because it was an adventure for me and Corneliu is a unique director in an emerging and very interesting film industry.”
He added about Porumboiu: “I am surprised to see his ability to improvise and to come victoriously out of different situations. As a filmmaker myself, I greatly admire this ability that only few directors have, to set out on a journey without a safety net and to carry out his intuitions until the end, without the fear he might fail. You can learn a great deal from the way he directs and I would love to have this easiness and freedom in approaching a story. Corneliu is very kind and intelligent and he knows how to make the actor act naturally, giving them enough freedom and putting them in
comfortable situations. It was quite a discovery for me.”
The film tells the story of Cristi, a police officer, who gets to the island of La Gomera, in Spain, in order to learn the “El Silbo” language, a form of whistling, which is specific to that area. His mission is to free Zsolt, a controversial businessman who is arrested in Bucharest.
Gomera is Corneliu Porumboiu`s first feature film made outside Romania and stars
Vlad Ivanov, Catrinel Menghia (Marlon),
Rodica Lazăr și Sabin Tambrea.
The shootings started on February 18, in Bucharest and they will be over at the beginning of next month.
The ancestral language El Silbo, enlisted in the UNESCO heritage, made the local authorities of the island, El Cabildo de La Gomera and the company Fred Olsen S.A. support this project, since their values are based on the sustainability and protection of the local identity.
The film is written and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, the cinematography is signed by
Tudor Mircea, Simona Pădurețu is the art director,
Dana Păpăruz is the costume designer and Arantxa Etcheverria Porumboiu is in charge of the artistic direction.
Gomera is a 42 KM FILM production in coproduction with Les Films du Worso (France), Komplizen Film (Germany) and Arte Grand Accord. The producer is Marcela Ursu, and the executive producer is Patricia Poienaru. The co-producers are Sylvie Pialat, Benoît Quainon, Janine Jackowski, Jonas Dornbach and Maren Ade. The international sales agent is MK2 Films.
The film is made with the support of the Romanian Film centre and Eurimages and it will be released in the Romanian cinemas in 2019.
