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FESTIVALS Romania

Hooked looking to snag Venice Days audiences

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After Rezo Film, the French sales agent behind Hooked, opted out of the official competition at the Locarno Film Festival, director Adrian Sitaru’s debut feature will now have its premiere in the Venice Days sidebar of the upcoming Venice International Film Festival (August 27-September 6).

The indie Romanian/French tragicomic Hooked, produced by Sitaru for his 4Proof Film along with France’s MPM Film on a micro-budget of €300,000, is a bizarre meditation on the way seemingly strong human relations can be dramatically affected by small events: a fishing morning goes terribly wrong for a middle-aged couple when they run over what appears to be a suicidal prostitute.

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Sitaru also wrote the picture, which was shot in all subjective angles, which makes it rather difficult to watch but adds to the tension and makes the plot twists even more dramatic. Maria Dinulescu (California Dreamin’ [+see also:
trailer
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), Ioana Flora and Adrian Titieni star in this disturbing film.

The director has done a great deal of post-production since the very first version of the film had a pre-release screening at the 2007 Independent Producers’ International Film Festival in Constanta. Not only was it widely re-edited, the film also had a hard time finding funding for the 35mm transfer, as it was entirely shot and edited in HD.

Sitaru is the winner of last year’s Golden Leopard of Tomorrow at Locarno for his short film Waves, as well as one of the participants of the Cannes Cinefondation 2008, where he has been developing his next feature film project, Of Love, With Best Intentions.

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