Lavinia is a tempest. She's impulsive, she miscalculates, and she doesn't know very well how to love. But she wants to be a good mother. Her dream of turning their home into a "palace" under bluer skies carries them through four seasons of attraction and rejection. Under the silent gaze of the river, within the slow rhythm of the valley, much remains unsaid.

This is the synopsis for A River's Gaze [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], the first film by Romanian director Andreea Cristina Borțun, selected by the SMART7 European film festival network as one of the titles showcased across all seven festivals within the network (see the news): Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris, IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival, FILMADRID International Film Festival, Transilvania International Film Festival, New Horizons International Film Festival, Reykjavík International Film Festival and Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

"The story of the movie is backed by a process of immersive research that I conducted over six years within rural communities in southern Romania. Using artistic research tools informed by anthropological fieldwork was, from the very beginning, an intuitive decision. I knew the rural South because I had grown up there, but as an adult, I had grown distant from it. The process of developing the film's narrative was also an open one. The years of field research, the conversations with the local women who shared their life stories, and especially the defining encounter with one of them - who served as the model for Lavinia's interiority - will, I hope, ensure a fair representation of today's rural Romania, which, after all, is home to half of the country's population," states Borțun.

Andreea Cristina Borțun is a filmmaker, visual researcher and faculty member at the "IL Caragiale" National University of Theatre and Film (UNATC) in Bucharest. Her cinematic practice is grounded in anthropological research and explores, through a hybrid language of fiction and documentary, the sensory relationship between communities and their environment. Her short films have been selected for major festivals such as the Cannes Directors' Fortnight (When Night Meets Dawn), Toronto (Blue Spring) and Karlovy Vary.

Written by Borțun herself, the film stars Mihaela Subţirică and Ştefan Costea. A River's Gaze was produced by Gabriela Suciu for Atelier de Film (Romania), and co-produced by Jean-Laurent Csinidis and Jérôme Nunes for Films de Force Majeure (France) and Ales Pavlin for Perfo doo (Slovenia), with executive production from Romanian-US star Sebastian Stan. The Open Reel handles international sales.

Check out our exclusive trailer below: