While
Acasă, My Home / Acasă, the most awarded Romanian documentary of the last years, continues to travel the festival circuit,
Radu Ciorniciuc already works on his next film,
Father / Tata. Co-directed alongside the
Acasă screenwriter and Ciorniciuc`s life partner,
Lina Vdovîi, the new film will focus on modern-day slavery.
“It is about a father who is basically living and working in modern-day slavery conditions”, Ciorniciuc tells Variety. “He was violent to his daughter when she was young and now they meet. She is a journalist and she wants to confront him in Italy, where he works, coming from Moldova. She learns he has been in this nightmarish situation of modern-day slavery for the last two decades and her investigation gives them a platform to explore their broken bond. SO once again, it`s a family story”, he says about the project he has been filming for two years now, supported by HBO Europe, which also backed
Acasă. Ciorniciuc will also reunite with
Acasă producer, the filmmaker
Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan.
While admitting to slowly “sliding towards fiction”, it will be another personal documentary for Ciorniciuc. “Not only the characters in the film are close family, but it`s an important story for our generation – I don`t think I have one childhood friend that didn`t have a family member working abroad. Family relations have changed in ways that we are still trying to comprehend”, he says.
Tata, set to be released in two years, just like Acasă, will also show the ambiguity of the problem, enabling further exploitation. “All the elements of slavery, including physical violence, racism and poor living conditions are there, which makes the reality of our characters quite distressing. Some of it is very in-your-face, often involving legal action and some is more subtle. Just think about all these workers picking our fruit, working 18 hours a day without getting paid for overtime, without having a break. There is a lot of vulnerability in these communities.”
