20/09/2017 - The co-production between Romania, Spain and the Czech Republic is set to start production in October

Romanian director Tudor Giurgiu (Why Me? [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tudor Giurgiu
film profile]) is approaching the start of production for his fourth feature, Parking [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tudor Giurgiu
film profile] (working title: In the Beat of a Heart). The project is a co-production between Giurgiu’s Libra Film, Tito Clint Movies (Spain) and Evolution Films (Czech Republic). Production will start on 18 October, with the Spanish cities of Córdoba, Seville and Candás serving as the main shooting locations. 

The story is based on a novel, Closeness, written by Romanian author Marin Mălaicu-Hondrari. The screenplay, co-written by Giurgiu and Mălaicu-Hondrari, follows Adrian (Mihai Smarandache), a Romanian poet who arrives in Spain illegally in 2002. Without any papers, he starts working as a night watchman for the business of a local man, Rafael (Luis Bermejo), and his life will change forever when he meets Maria (Belén Cuesta), a guitar player in a jazz band. Ariadna Gil also plays a significant part, as Rafael’s partner.

It would be hard to find a Romanian feature in which the involvement of a foreign partner is more significant than in Parking. Shot mainly in Spain (part of the film will be shot in the Romanian town of Sângeorz-Băi, Mălaicu-Hondrari’s hometown), with a cast of mainly Spanish actors and actresses, the movie also has other important members of the team hailing from Spain – for example, art director Sonia Nolla and costume designer Fernando García. The film’s DoP is Romania’s Marius Panduru. 

In a press release, Giurgiu says: “I have been fascinated by Marin Mălaicu-Hondrari’s life story, so we tried to work together to recreate both the context of the early years of the millennium, when many Romanians left their country, living abroad in very difficult conditions, but also a love story peppered with several recurrent topics in his prose and poetry: a nostalgia towards the places where he grew up, travel, and people’s ability to imagine and dream, to wish things that can be more or less accomplished.” 

The film’s Romanian release is tentatively set for October 2018.