21/03/2025 - Five years after his feature debut, Poppy Field, Eugen Jebeleanu seems undecided as to whether he wants to make a film or the making-of of a film

Five years after his feature debut, Poppy Field [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eugen Jebeleanu
film profile], a rare Romanian LGBTQ+ feature, director Eugen Jebeleanu returns to the spotlight with Internal Zero [+see also:
interview: Eugen Jebeleanu
film profile], currently being shown in the Smart7 competition at Vilnius. A second collaboration with screenwriter Ioana Moraru, the Romanian director’s sophomore feature is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Lavinia Branişte, one of Romania’s most lauded authors and the co-writer of Vlad Petri’s documentary Between Revolutions [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vlad Petri
film profile].

Internal Zero follows the trials and tribulations in the life of thirtysomething woman Cristina, and Jebeleanu opted for his main character to be played by three actresses, Valentina Zaharia, Cristina Drăghici and Cendana Trifan, with a different one portraying her as we home in on the main aspects of her life: the job where Cristina is frequently abused by her unpredictable, domineering boss, Liliana (Katia Pascariu); the relationship with her mother (Irina Movilă), a hotel maid in Spain; and her love life, where she has sporadic encounters with two lovers (Cristian Popa and Vlad Udrescu).

Over this obvious layer of his film, Jebeleanu insists on offering us a meta layer, where we see the director explaining his artistic intentions, in split screen, in workshops and rehearsals with all of the movie’s actors. In other (semi-meta?) scenes, we see the actors interacting with the crew (making an appearance, among many others, are DoP Marius Panduru, sound designer Sebastian Zsemlye and assistant director Paul Cioran) before entering “the scene”. The intention is clear: in a story about a woman who is constantly annoyed and, at times, even defeated by her environment, this meta layer is used to suck even more energy from her life.

The movie will definitely have its fans, as it is carefully crafted and gets the job done in approximating the challenges in the life of a modern Romanian woman who seems to move around in a stifling bubble that constitutes her own personal hell. The film’s supporters might use words such as “bold” or even “revolutionary”, but is Internal Zero truly those things? Or, an even better question: is it enough for a film to “only” be bold?

In a conversation with Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung, this writer asked if films such as his ultra-cinematic The Taste of Things [+see also:
film review
film profile] are more difficult to make when political features are so à la mode (in the most superficial and ephemeral meaning of the expression), and he answered that many features today are so preoccupied with conveying their message that they forget they are actually cinema. This is precisely the case with Internal Zero…

Unfortunately, this feature is more agenda (although, at times, it insists it’s anti-agenda) than cinema. Moreover, the agenda is sometimes read out loud, in the most un-cinematic way possible. François Truffaut famously said, “Movies move along like trains in the night,” with no “traffic jams or useless down time”. Jebeleanu is more interested in the traffic jam, and while he's at it, he starts to disassemble a car and show the audience its innards, at length. One can understand the artistic attraction of this endeavour, yet it is so un-cinematic that it becomes contrived and opaque, possibly asking more of its audience than they are willing to offer.

Internal Zero was produced by Romanian outfit Icon Production. The film is being handled internationally by Patra Spanou Film.