Almost a decade after his feature debut, Mariţa, had its world premiere in the East of the West Competition at Karlovy Vary in 2017, winning the FEDEORA Award in the process, Romanian director Cristi Iftime returns to the spotlight with The Fear’s Artist. The project is being produced by Marian Crişan through Rova Film (Romania).

The screenplay, written by Iftime, centres on Florin, a man who feels increasingly alienated in his new home in an old apartment building in Bucharest. Living in isolation with his wife, he becomes suspicious of his neighbours and develops the unsettling feeling that he is being watched. When a neighbour dies in ambiguous circumstances, Florin forms a troubling bond with the deceased’s parents, a connection that gradually traps him within his own psyche, where childhood trauma and distorted realities begin to take hold.

The budget amounts to €450,000, with circa €190,000 coming from the Romanian National Film Center. The project was presented at the Les Arcs Coproduction Village in 2021 and was later featured in Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest’s Work in Progress programme in 2025 and this year’s Transilvania IFF Works in Progress. The shoot took place over 16 days in October 2025 in Bucharest, with Laurenţiu Răducanu serving as DoP. The cast is led by Silviu Debu (Don’t Let Me Die, The Capture) as Florin and Ilinca Hărnuţ (Ink Wash) as his wife, alongside Ionuţ Vişan (We Won’t Grow Old Together), Ana Ciontea (Mariţa, Sieranevada), Richard Bovnoczki (Where Elephants Go, Three Kilometres to the End of the World) and Dorin Andone (Breaking News).

Producer Marian Crişan tells Cineuropa that The Fear’s Artist “is based on an original, intriguing script. It’s a special film that draws you into a character’s mind like it’s a labyrinth. What makes the movie stand out is the blending of the absurd with the reality of communal living in an old block of flats in present-day Bucharest. Silviu Debu and Ilinca Hărnuţ play a memorable couple who come into contact with the other characters, themselves treated in a distinctive, absurd and even surreal manner.”

For his part, Iftime explains that the project emerged from an accumulation of personal observations during the pandemic. “I became increasingly aware of how the isolation would affect people around me, and I feared that I could end up the same way,” he says, noting that he began writing the script at the start of the lockdown period, though “the film is not about the pandemic. […] I wanted to make a movie about loneliness, which can be comic, through repetition and absurd situations, or tragic, when it leads to fear and delusion. Everything that happens in this feature stems from the feeling of loneliness,” the director explains, adding that his film captures the alienation specific to big cities.

The Fear’s Artist will be released domestically in 2027, depending on the specifics of its world premiere.