Following a development stage that took almost a decade, Romanian director Sabin Dorohoi has started the shoot for his first feature, Clara, in the German city of Ulm. The project is being staged by the director and Daniel Burlac through Western Transylvania Studios (Romania). The companies co-producing are Eyrie Entertainment (Germany), represented by Daniel Ehrenberg and Angélique Saad, and Chainsaw Europe Studio (Romania), represented by Viorel Chesaru.

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The screenplay, written by Ruxandra Ghiţescu (whose Otto the Barbarian [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ruxandra Ghiţescu
scheda film], her first feature as a director, has just been nominated in as many as 13 categories at the Gopos, Romania’s film-industry awards), centres on Clara (Olga Török), a former teacher who leaves her family in a poor Romanian village to work as a live-in nanny for a German family. Her son Ionuţ (Luca Puia) misses her deeply, and a decision that he makes will force Clara to reconsider her path in life.

After the shoot in Germany, the production will move to Romania, in cities and villages in the Banat region. Production is expected to wrap after 23 shooting days. Lulu de Hillerin is the DoP, and supporting characters are played by Ovidiu Crişan, David Rott and Ida Jarcsek-Gaza. The project was supported by the Romanian National Film Center with just over €100,000. It was also backed by ZDF/ARTE.

The director tells Cineuropa that his film is deeply personal, as he was one of the many children left behind by (as many as five million, according to some sources) Romanians searching for better work opportunities abroad or in other cities. “In every Romanian family, there is at least a relative, a brother, a mother, a sister, a father, who left the country to work abroad. This is a gigantic social phenomenon, and I felt the need to pour my soul into a film about this very timely Romanian issue,” the director explains.

Dorohoi also says that the Danube, which symbolically connects Clara’s native village and her adoptive new home in Ulm, has a special place in the story. Finding the right young actor to play his child protagonist was of paramount importance, too. The search took months, and after meeting more than 100 young actors, Dorohoi made the acquaintance of little Luca Puia almost by accident. “His mother, actress Mirela Puia, came in for an audition, and this is how I met him. I felt he was a very special boy, and he was of the right age and had the exact look I was searching for. He learned the lines for the audition on the spot, and that was really impressive,” the director says gushingly of his discovery.

Clara will be delivered next winter, and a domestic release is expected for 2023.