International Competition : The Feature films

Self-Portrait of a Dutiful Daughter

Autoportretul unie fete cuminti

Ana Lungu

2015
Romania
1h21
Fiction
Col.
with french subtitles

What can a former dutiful daughter do of her days, when she is a Romanian woman in her thirties from a good family whose life will never resemble that of Simone de Beauvoir? Cristiana talks about everything and nothing with her friends and lugs around her doctoral thesis in engineering, which is not moving forward as she would like it to. She maintains a sexual yet hardly satisfying relationship with a married man and she might, why not, adopt a dog—something she has always dreamed of doing. Under the seeming banality of the conversations that give structure to this second feature by Ana Lungu (who studied under Cristi Puiu) an existential poetry and an absurd form of humour arise. They remind us that experience is not necessarily something that we acquire, but rather something that falls apart and crumbles away day after day.
(Mathieu Macheret)

Ana Lungu was born in 1978 in Bucharest. She studied Psychology and Film Directing. After graduating in 2004, she worked as script supervisor for The Death of Mr. Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu. Together with Ana Szel, she directed The Belly of the Whale, selected in Locarno in 2010.

Cast
Elena Popa, Emilian Oprea, Andrei Enache, Iris Spiridon
Screenplay
Ana Lungu
Photography
Silviu Stavila
Sound
Vlad Voinescu, Filip Muresan
Art direction
Vladimir Iguanu
Editing
Dana Bunescu
Production
Mandragora, Vlad Simion

CONTACT :

Mandragora

Raluca Paduraru

raluca@mandragora.ro

2015 Competition