19/08/2026 - The genre film starring Adrian Nicolae focuses on a police officer caught in a dysfunctional system

Rolando Matsangos (left) and Adrian Nicolae (centre) in A Long-Awaited Vacation

After releasing two comedies, Taximetrişti and Klaus & Barroso, in 2023 and 2024, respectively, Romanian director Bogdan Theodor Olteanu makes a sharp shift in tone with the neo-noir A Long-Awaited Vacation. The film is being produced by Ana Voicu through Tangaj Production (Romania) and by Iulia Andriuţă through Amprenta Films (Moldova).

The screenplay, written by Olteanu and Adrian Nicolae, who also plays the protagonist, focuses on 37-year-old police officer Vasile Tătaru, who has prepared everything for a long-awaited holiday but is ordered by his boss to postpone his departure in order to conduct a murder investigation. As the case inches toward its resolution, the protagonist gets bogged down in bureaucracy and political influence, and is targeted by organised crime.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

The budget amounts to €900,000, with around one-third of this amount coming from the Romanian National Film Center. The feature was developed within the Script 2 Film programme of the Mediterranean Film Institute and was also pitched at Connecting Cottbus. Shooting will take place over 22 days in September and October, with Mihai Apopei serving as DoP. Bogdan Dumitrache (Three Kilometres to the End of the World, Man and Dog), Alexandru Ion (Tati Full-Time, Taximetrişti), Rolando Matsangos (Taximetrişti), Ioana Bugarin (Miracle), Maria Popistaşu (Y, Tuesday, After Christmas), Carol Ionescu (Mia Misses Her Revenge) and Victoria Răileanu (Y, Taximetrişti) round off the cast.

Producer Voicu tells Cineuropa that her “film speaks directly about the moment we’re living in. I’ve been working with Bogdan on this project since 2022, and over these years, the reality the film anticipated has, in many ways, become our reality. It’s about the loss of trust in institutions, about how a dysfunctional system can discourage even those who are trying to make it work, and ultimately, it’s about giving up. It’s important to make the movie now because the tensions it captures are no longer just a social backdrop; they are part of our everyday lives.”

As for the director, he says that the film was inspired by his work as an investigative journalist. “I spent years talking with police officers and prosecutors, seeing what their work looks like from within a system that asks them, day after day, to do as much as possible with fewer and fewer resources – and to look the other way at the right moment. The script is a collage of real cases. What struck me the most wasn’t the corruption; it was the normality of it,” the helmer explains, adding that his feature is “about a good person who gets lost, not through dramatic events, but gradually, out of frustration”.

Depending on potential festival selections, A Long-Awaited Vacation will be released domestically in 2027 or in the first half of 2028.