Serving as producer and partner at microFILM, founded by acclaimed talent Ada Solomon, Carla Fotea is the Romanian representative at this year’s EFP's Producers on the Move. She works on fiction and documentary films by both acclaimed directors and newcomers, and her portfolio includes titles such as Radu Jude’s Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn [+lee también:
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entrevista: Radu Jude
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entrevista: Ada Solomon
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Cineuropa: You came to film production from advertising. Did the international fame of Romanian cinema motivate this career shift?
Carla Fotea: Not really. I can’t say I was aware of the international appeal of Romanian cinema. I did some theatre when I was a teen, and I watched a lot of films, so it was clear to me quite early on that I would go into film at some point. I thought I was going to be a scriptwriter, so I took this detour in advertising to practice some form of writing, but then I found out about producing and it made much more sense to me.

How did you come to join microFILM, arguably the most successful production company in Romania in the field of auteur cinema?
Ada Solomon noticed me while I was pitching a short film project at NexT – the short film festival she founded in Bucharest many years ago and which, sadly, no longer exists. I was working with Cristian Mungiu’s Mobra Films at the time, but working on some of my own projects on the side, as well. Some months after the pitch, Ada messaged me on Facebook and invited me over for a coffee at Hi Film, which soon became microFILM. That happened in 2016 and I’ve hung around since then. I became a partner in 2019.

You work with both established directors and newcomers. What are the advantages and challenges in each case?
At this particular moment in time, we’re facing huge challenges, regardless of how experienced the particular film directors are. Financing and distribution are becoming increasingly difficult everywhere, and especially in Eastern European territories. I sense an increasing fear of censorship in this context of rising extremism. The majority of the films we make at microFILM are by diverse voices, female filmmakers, queer authors, and the stories we strive to tell together aim to shed light on these unseen communities, to spark uncomfortable conversations. But I’ll admit I’m afraid for the future of our work. Cultural products like these, and their authors, will be the first to be scrubbed from the public agenda and to lose the public funding we rely so heavily upon.

Tell us more about the criteria you adopt when choosing a project, both personally and in line with microFILM’s interests.
Art house cinema has been microFILM’s bread and butter since the very beginning, but lately we’ve noticed that the most daring, provocative and exciting projects come from diverse filmmakers. So we’re maintaining our strong art house focus, but with a penchant for stories from the LGBTQIA+ community, from the Roma minority, from female filmmakers, or from authors who don’t have a traditional film education. And maybe as a visceral response to what we’re seeing in the world, we’re also working on a strong slate of documentaries that are either political or extremely personal. But, at the end of the day, the one criterion we always follow is the quality and potential of our working relationship with the filmmakers.

What projects are you currently working on?
Since early last year, we’ve been shooting Alexandru Solomon’s Small Expectations which follows the four rounds of Romanian elections (local, parliamentary, presidential) that we had last year, the mayhem that ensued after the cancellation of the presidential elections in December 2024, and the second presidential campaign we had in 2025. Alexandru had exclusive access inside the campaigns of the main political actors, and, personally, I’m very excited about showing the final product to the world. I think it will become a landmark in Romanian documentary-making, like so many of Alexandru’s films.

We’re also in the process of financing Expelled, the third documentary by Tudor Platon (DOP on The New Year That Never Came [+lee también:
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entrevista: Bogdan Mureşanu
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Also in the financing phase is The Price of Gold by theatre director Eugen Jebeleanu, which we presented earlier this year at Cinemart. It tells the story of the mutual, delicate dependency between a boy and his father, told on and around the dance floor.

And, last but not least, we’re preparing to shoot I Matter later this year, a debut film by actress and Roma activist Alina Șerban. It’s an inspirational movie based on her own life story and it’s a co-production by Germany and Belgium.