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New Talent
FILMINK had the opportunity to speak to the young star and producer of the exciting Romanian film, If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle, which screened at the Sydney Film Festival.
When it comes to great filmmaking, the world looks to the big budget productions from America, the kitsch charm from France, creepy horror from Japan etc. But in recent years Romania is emerging as a country producing quality cinema, most famously with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 4 Days winning the Palme d'Or in 2008.
Sydney was treated to the latest film being touted as "Romanian New Wave" at the Sydney Film Festival with If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle screening in the competition. The Australian premiere of the film was attended by the star Chilibar Papan and producer Daniel Mitulescu.
In this searing, gritty and startlingly authentic prison drama Silviu, portrayed in a remarkable debut by young plucked-from-his-schoolyard Chilibar Papan, is being released from prison very soon, but not soon enough. His absent mother has finally returned from Italy and wants to take Silviu's brother back with her just before he is released, but Silviu knows all too well what this means.
Star Chilibar Papan describes how his character had a very difficult life before prison. "His mother went to Italy for a better life and took my character with her and there he found a man to sleep with her and so she threw me away, back to Romania," he says. "After this she took me in another time and then threw me back just like the other time. After this I don't know what to do, I was just insane and stressed and I begin to rob, I begin to fight with other guys." Silviu must stop the same fate happening to his brother by any means necessary, from within the confines of the prison, even at the cost of his own freedom.
This powerful story was originally a Romanian stage play and moved writer Catalin Mitulescu with his brother, producer Daniel, so much they immediately felt that this was a story they wanted to bring to the big screen. "I saw the play in the year 2000 and it was very good and it had some strong things inside it," Daniel recalls. "Then my brother wrote the first draft of the adaptation for the cinema and I liked his interpretation of the play more than the theatre play itself. The play and the film are very different. The play only focused on the kidnapping scene. So we developed all the events before that, the motivation, the conflict."
In order to create a truly authentic film, Mitulescu visited several prisons and even cast real inmates to add an extra level of realism. At times, these inmates approached the filmmakers with words of advice.
The film's narrative changed a number of times from conception through to shooting. "It was necessary to update the script that my brother wrote several years ago because Romania has changed a lot in the last ten years," Daniel Mitulescu explains. "For example, now there are cell phones and even though it is forbidden in prison, they use it. It's a big difference between the prison where there are no cell phones in that time, to now. They communicate a lot more with the outside world."
Though the film may sound depressing and hard going, its greatest strength is how it manages to remain uplifting. "Despite the situation, despite the fact that he was a teenager left by his mother and has an ill father, and a little brother he must take care of, and he's in prison, despite all of that, he has his own dreams, he has his own will, he has his own fight with the world. He's not giving up," Mitulescu says. The film's title is the expression of Silviu's liberation and, in the words of Mitulescu, "it is more optimistic, because this is what we should do, overcome our condition, try to do something different."
If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle is a triumphant and exciting example of the ongoing quality of cinema emerging from Romania. Star Chilibar Papan is reuniting with the film's writer for his next movie which he hopes "will be the most beautiful movie about love in Romania ever made." While Papan is very "hush hush" about any details, if it is anything like his impressive acting debut, it is almost certainly something audiences can look forward to.