Romanian director Radu Jude is indeed “restless” (or “intranquille”, in the eyes of the Pompidou Centre, which will organise a retrospective of his career next September): after winning a Silver Bear with Kontinental ’25 [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] in February, Jude will be competing at Locarno with his 170-minute-long, iPhone-shot Dracula. The film is being produced by Alex Teodorescu through Saga Film, and co-produced by Nabis Filmgroup (Austria) and Paul Thiltges Distribution (Luxembourg). Several other production outfits from Brazil, Switzerland, the UK and Romania are “honorific” production partners, as per Saga.

With a screenplay written by Jude, Dracula might not share too much creative DNA with the hundreds, if not thousands, of works inspired by Bram Stoker’s novel, and yet it might be closer to historical reality, as Wallachian ruler Vlad Ţepeş is just as significant an inspiration for this film as the gothic character. Dracula is made up of a succession of stories wildly differing in style and approach, “from pulp to avant-garde, from literary to grotesque, from fantastic to hyper-realistic”, as described in a press release.

The budget amounts to €1.5 million, with circa €500,000 coming from the Romanian National Film Center. Dracula also received support from the Austrian Film Institute, Film Fund Luxembourg and Creative Europe – MEDIA. The project was shot over 29 days in various picturesque locations, including the medieval fortress of Sighişoara and in Bucharest. Marius Panduru is the DoP. Interestingly, around 20 actors – among them Adonis Tanța, Gabriel Spahiu, Oana Maria Zaharia, Alexandru Dabija and Lukas Miko – play more than 130 characters in stories set during multiple historical periods. “This required meticulous attention to costume design. Additionally, the make-up team employed advanced prosthetics and special effects techniques in order to bring the numerous characters to life,” producer Alex Teodorescu tells Cineuropa.

Jude, who playfully said at one point in the Romanian press that the tagline of his new film would be “Dracula sucks cock” (actually, it is “Make Dracula great again”), states that there is “a little something for everyone” in his new feature, as Dracula is “a commercial film, a meditation on national myths, an essay, a vampire movie, a lowbrow comedy, a political film, a satire, an erotic film, an action movie and literary cinema. It was high time we [Romanians] gave the world a Dracula. I tried to do my best, and I hope the viewers enjoy at least some aspects of my film.”

Dracula is being handled internationally by Luxbox (France). Independenţa Film will distribute the film domestically this year.