RO

Born in Oravița and going to high-school in Bucharest, young Cristinel Șirli was dreaming in the ‘80s of becoming a cinematographer. At the age of 20, a horrifying diagnosis that gave him only a few months to live, would change his destiny.

Today he is one of the most important film sound engineers in France, owning his own studios, at the highest level, in the center of Paris.

“In Romania they gave me a 5 months chance of survival. My uncle, Vasile Șirli, composer, was here, in France, he looked into it and here they gave me around 8% chances of survival with a 9 months treatment that involved full-time hospitalization.

So I came here for treatment, but my visa was only for three months, they didn’t want to extend it and I either went back to Romania and was done for, or stayed here with 8% chances to live.”

He remained in Paris, knowing that he could never return to Romania, where he would die. A long period of recovery followed and for eight years he carried on fighting the illness, but he also started a new life. When he left the hospital, he was committed to learn French and finding an occupation.

„Because of my health issues I couldn’t work as a camera operator, so I thought I’d do something else that I enjoy, also connected to film.”

Being related to Vasile Șirli, a well-known theater and film composer, he ended up studying sound.

„I went through the necessary stages and after 4-5 months I was already working. I worked a lot, mixing many television shows, documentaries.”

He started as an assistant sound engineer and then worked as an engineer at an independent studio until 1998.

„Then I thought that it would be better if I became a freelancer, to be able to work with more independent studios. I worked a lot and in 2000 I realized that I had so many clients, I wanted to start my own firm.

But because I didn’t have the means to build a studio, I rented. Two years later, my old employer went bankrupt, I went to the courthouse to pay off his debt and took over his studios, 4 at the time.”

That’s how he started building what today is one of the most appreciated sound mixing and sound design companies in the world of film.

“There was an old cinema in Paris, Le Grand Pavois, which had gone bankrupt. I bought this cinema and turned 4 projection halls into 4 sound studios for cinema.”

It was successful very fast and I then looked into making a bigger sound mixing studio, I was looking for a place and I found this huge space and I wanted to build my studios here.

I planned everything and found financing. We’re talking about a 10 million euro investment, I have never had that kind of money.

Anyway, in France, even if you have money, you still get a loan. It’s much safer, financially. If you can’t keep your car, you sell it and then you don’t lose all of the money. I know that this mentality is not present in Romania. But western logic is different.

If I have a million euro in my company account and I want to open a studio that costs 1 million euro, I go to the bank and get a one million euro loan. Sure, French interest rates are not that high. But we never make investments in cash because you never know what tomorrow brings.”

So we found Cristinel Șirli working, in one of the most performant sound studios in Paris, in the 15th arrondissement, close to the Eiffel Tower.

At the front desk we were welcomed by his daughter, Eliza, who is working behind the front desk until she finishes her studies. On the walls in the mixing rooms we can see posters of some of the films that had the sound mix done there, at Creative Sound – “Respect” or “Fast and Furious”.

The first thing that the Romanian sound engineer wants to show us is the fascinating hall in which sounds from films are created from scratch. It looks like a storage place for all kinds of objects, but it’s a place filled with crativity and passion.

In order to understand the universe of sound, Cristinel explains the main pillars.

“Ambiental sound is what you hear on the footage – birds, the city, the train. Sound effects are door sounds, electric equipment, water flowing from the tap, etc. And foley refers to these sounds that we remake in the studio. We are in a foley studio and the ones who create these sounds are foley artists.

If a character from a film moves a chair, the foley artist remakes that movement watching the footage. You can’t learn this in school, it’s a thing that is passed on.

Then, if a chicken passes through the frame, they make chicken sounds. They are true artists.

And finally, sound design is everything that doesn’t exist and we create, abstract sound. For example, what does a space ship that doesn’t exist in real life sound like? We imagine and create that sound.

In our studios we cover all of those categories.”

Minding every detail, as a manager, Cristinel is 100% involved so that his studios reach perfection in sound.

“This is a cabinet from the ’30s. An Ikea wardrobe cannot sound the same as this cabinet. The same with wood floors. Here we have a wooden floor that is over 200 years old. It’s really noisy, I bought it from an antique store and it was originally in a hotel.

Here there is a Parisian window, that has a particular sound, unique, the wooden frame sounds some kind of way.”

Many Hollywood films end up in Cristinel șirli’s hands or other engineers using his studios, to be dubbed in French. Among these there is Oscar winning film The King’s Speech.

„It’s a film that touched me because it was also about language. I try to stick to the original version as much as possible, that means 100%. And the voice of the actor cast here, the interjections, everything came out perfect. The French version of The King’s Speech is one of the best French dubbed films.

The dubbing industry here is colossal, bigger than the film industry, because all films must be dubbed. We have thousands of actors and other people working behind the scenes, thousands of jobs.

French actors demand that the dubbing is done here, in the central studio. Some directors demand it too. The most recent, working here right now, is Roman Polanski.

Polanski also did his last film here and told me << Cristinel, you have exceptional studios and trust me, I know what I’m saying.>> Last evening Polanski was here, he’ll be here this evening again.”

He is also a constant collaborator with George Lucas’ studios, and business is prosperous both individually, as well as for the entire company Creative Sound. He currently owns 12 studios and is working as a sound engineer and as a manager for all the studios.

„When they have to send american films to be dubbed in French, the people at George Lucas’ studios reccomend me. I have reached this level being a Romanian, and Romanians don’t have a good reputation when it comes to sound. I am happy and proud of this.”

His evolution is even more impressive as he works with directors from all over the world and is doing sound mixing for many foreign languages.

„Some had doubts, not because they were racists, but because they were not convinced that I understood French words in order to work on the sound. Then, the transition from television into cinema was a bit weird for the French, it’s not a common thing.”

At a recent reunion of French sound engineers, the person who had done the sound mixing for the French film that won the Palme d’Or this year (Anatomy of a Fall – 2023) and someone said that he was the third French sound engineer with a Palme d’Or.

–              What about me?

–              Oh, you did a Romanian film.

–              But it was mixed in France, it’s my film.

–              Yes, but it’s a Romanian film.”

He did the sound for the film that brought the Palme d’Or to Cristian Mungiu, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days. He is also a supporter of Romanian filmmakers, every time they have asked for his help.

„A lot of people say that you can’t hear Romanian films. Indeed, there are several problems regarding this issue.

First – the cinemas are not calibrated. Sound has to be perfectly calibrated in order to work, and in Romania, there aren’t any specialists who can calibrate sound in cinemas. I saw a film that I had mixed here in a Romanian cinema in a mall, and it wasn’t calibrated. It’s not ok.

Then, historically, Romanians have never had a good sound school. Russians had a good school. Romanians are extraordinary when it comes to cinematography, with the lighting and visual aesthetics, but the sound has always been a problem. In Ceaușescu’s time it was the same.

And, not least, there aren’t any studios. If we sum all these up, you get bad sound in films.”

Despite all of the above, Cristinel Șirli continued working on Romanian films, from the desire to give back to people he admired as a child and encourage the new wave of filmmakers.

He has worked on some of the most relevant Romanian films in the past 20 years, such as California Dreamin’, 4,3,2, Beyond the Hills, Child’s Pose or Aferim!, awarded in Cannes or Berlinale, but the Romanian label has not always been associated to success in cinema.

„I was working with a director and he came one morning with the Liberation news paper, he put it on the table and the front page read “Romanians are coming to break our parking meters.”

I said:

–              <<Why did you bring this?

–              Aren’t you Romanian?

–              I am, but not like them.>>

That was a joke, nothing serious. Somebody once said to me:

–              <<Are you Romanian?

–              Yes, I am Romanian.

–             And you aren’t tanned, like they are?

–              When I go to the beach, I am tanned, I said laughing.>>

These things don’t get to me, I even make jokes on the matter. I have my pride, I never hide that I am Romanian, I keep my head high, nothing ever bothers me. The French are not racist and I treat jokes as such.”

He has worked with great French directors, but his biggest satisfactions came from working with Romanian filmmakers.

„My greatest joy was working with directors like Mungiu, Netzer, Radu Jude, but most of all with the seniors – Dan Pița, Sergiu Nicolaescu, Stere Gulea, the ones that I admired in high-school. That was really magical. To have behind me, in this studio, Stere Gulea, on The Moromete Family part 2, to me was amazing.

We see a film as a child, we give it so much, we try to make it perfect, so it is hard for me to choose which one was the most important to me. Each experience is special.

Some directors prefer to come in once in a while, they see the advancements, they give notes.

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days was special because it doesn’t have any music. Mungiu, when he first wrote to me, he said that he wanted the audience to be glued to their chair of fear, anguish, but that he doesn’t want any music, he doesn’t want any sound design, gust real sound. He wanted the truth in his sound.

When you think about it, no music, no sound design, then how do you show fear, stress? On a horror film, for example, if you remove the music, you don’t have anything. It was very difficult, but when I was in the cinema at the Cannes screening, it was extraordinary. The screening started at 10 in the evening and nobody left the cinema.

Mungiu’s style is that he sits next to you and doesn’t leave the studio at any time. You go out to the toilet, he goes out with you. You come back, he comes back with you.

Puiu, on the contrary, he wasn’t like that. He came towards the end to see.

This year I have worked on Călin Netzer’s latest film, he was in Paris and he would come at the end of the work day, he would see the progress and give notes.

Sound is very tiresome, especially if you don’t do it all the time. And it’s possible that you won’t get the necessary reaction if you are caught in it all day long.”

When he speaks about film and sound, Cristinel Șirli lights up. Although he doesn’t need the money, he continues working, he feeds on his passion as if it were a vital nutrient – “If you take this away, you kill me.”

For him, the day starts early in the morning, continues inside the isolated walls of the high-end Dolby-Atmos studios, and ends at night, when the Sun sets over Paris.

“When I get out of the studio and drive home, I put on classical music, to calm me down. We work a lot and it’s hard. We start at 7 A.M. and finish at 9 in the evening. I try to take care of myself now, but there were times when I would work even more.”

On the list of projects already finished this year, there is Luc Besson’s latest film and the French version of Guy Ritchie’s latest film.

He hopes that his example encourages young people to chose his profession and the new generations lay the foundation for a Romanian school of sound.

“If a young Romanian is passionate, he should work in Romania. Maybe study in the West and come back to help Romanian cinema to have true value when it comes to sound.

When I visit my mother and I see empty villages, everyone gone to Germany, Spain, Italy, it hurts. There used to be good people, and because they didn’t have the means to remain in Romania, they went to do construction work in other countries. Human value is lost.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Cristinel Șirli, the sound engineer in charge of one of the top studios in France: „I didn’t come to France to do sound, it was a matter of life and death.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO

There was a time when mornings in Paris would catch him alongside Samuel Beckett, after countless hours spent talking and drinking whiskey, another time when he would build with Krzysztof Kieślowski three legendary films: Red, White, Blue, and there were those years when he would return to his home country, with Lucian Pintilie, to produce some of the great Romanian director’s films.

We met Marin Karmitz in his office from MK2 in Paris, the film empire he founded in France, with cinemas, production, distribution and film restoring.

we were brought together by Romania and the interest for stories worth telling, whether regarding the world of cinema, or those that marked our history.

As a director and film producer, Marin Karmitz has received over 150 awards and nominations in major film festivals, including three Palme d’Or awards, three Golden Lions at Venice, a Golden Bear in Berlin, three Oscar nominations and no less than 25 Cesar Awards.

He openly greets us for an interview spanning several hours, during which we hear the names of the huge personalities with which he has worked : Marguerite Duras, Jean-Luc Godard, Theo Angelopoulos, Louis Malle or Claude Chabrol.

This story is not only about films and important names in universal culture, it is about a Romanian Jewish child, who lived in Bucharest in fear of the legionnaires, who was deprived of his right to attend a school and who was forced to flee in a foreign country.

That child is 84 today and has an incomparable career.

“I returned to Romania for the first time in the ’90’s for the production of one of Lucian Pintilie’s films (An Unforgettable Summer).

I was staying at a hotel next to the Royal Palace and wanted to find the house in which I was born, where I spent my childhood.”

“Back then there were no maps of Bucharest and I went by foot and managed to find my house by myself. It was on the Dumbrava Roșie street.

It was almost night and I managed to find the house, I was surprised to find myself reliving memories that I couldn’t describe.”

Marin was born into a Jewish family from Bucharest and bares hos grandfather’s name, Marin Karmitz, who ran a profitable dairy business.

His father and uncle owned an important chemical and pharmaceutical products and were some of the first targets of the rebel legionnaire movement, led by Horia Sima.

Marin was only 3 years old when the ultra-fascist rebels came into their house and terrorized his mother. The child was then held at gunpoint, as a method of intimidation of his mother.

“They came to our house searching for my father and his brother. They were there for three days and tried to make my mother say where they were hiding. That I remember very well, the terror we were living in.

Fear is something that you cannot forget it is always there. For example I can’t stand someone putting a gun to my head, figurately speaking, because I had a gun to my head, literally speaking, as a child.

I could not stand feeling pressure in any relation ship. I am known for that in the world of cinema.”

His memories of Romania pendulate now between terror and nostalgia.

“I had a very free childhood, because, as a Jew, I didn’t have the right to go to school. I only learned to read and write when I got to France. And I remember spending a lot of time with the other children in The Icoanei Garden, I would fool around, nobody would watch me. I had no obligations.”

Marin was 9 years old when he left Romania for good. Rid of the fascist terror, Romanian Jews who survived were oppressed by communists, who took all their belongings. So, left with barely anything, the Karmitz family embarked on a ship leaving from Constanța, without a destination.

After several stops in Istanbul, Beirut, Haifa or Naples, in which the Jews were not allowed to get off, the only city they were allowed in was Marseille.

It was only two years after the end on World War II, and Marin Karmitz’s life restarted in France.

“It was the only country that had Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité written on buildings. The only one that would take us.”

He went to a public school close to Nice and later went to Paris. His father wanted him to chose a profession such as law, but he was attracted to the arts.

“Ever since I discovered reading, I became passionate with books, I used to read a lot as a teenager, I didn’t have any friends because we used to move around a lot. We were living migrant lives.

I would have loved to be a writer, but I was no good. I would also have liked to become an architect, I had architect cousins, but I wasn’t good at this either. I couldn’t draw, I had no ear for music. I would have loved to lead an orchestra, but I wasn’t so good at it either.

All I was left was my passion for the world of cinema.

Another explanation is that, for may years, I had an immigrant passport. You needed a visa to go anywhere, we would spend countless hours in customs, getting checked, it was awful. I used to dream of having a diplomatic passport, to cross borders without any problem.

The I realized pretty quickly that cinema was a way in which I could cross any border without leaving my office, only with my imagination. You could travel the whole world without a passport or with an immaterial passport – film.”

“When I made films, produced or distributed them, I became such a traveler, without borders”

He studied cinematography at the L’Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris and graduated to be a camera operator, but he wanted to be a director.

So he first worked as an assistant director, but not with anybody.

“I had the opportunity to work with Agnes Varda, with Jean Luc Goddard.”

He then produced a short film for a young director using money borrowed from his father.

“There was this director that had already worked with all the great producers of the Nouvelle Vague period. And he had this project that all of them turned down. He told me about it and I said that I would try to produce his film.

I did that film with him and a wonderful actor, who recently passed away, Jean-Louis Trintignant.”

The short film was a success, and he earned money to direct his first short film, from a script written by Marguerite Duras.

“This didn’t have any success, but I had the opportunity to work with one of the most well-known woman authors in the world, at the moment. And, among other things, the film features Peter Brook’s wife, Natasha Perry and an actor who gave birth to a whole generation of actors, called Garrel, Louis Garrel’s grandfather.”

The film was, nevertheless, well received among intellectuals. And hos courage and non-conformism opened doors to great cultural creators, becoming one of them himself.

“Working on another project, for a year and a half I had the chance to drink whiskey with Samuel Beckett from 13:00 until 5 a.m. I was profoundly marked by that encounter.”

“I also met Ionesco in the time I was meeting Beckett.”

In 1972, the feature film “Coup pour coup”, which he directed and produced, has marked his career definitely. The story of the film was centered around a strike of a group of working women who could not stand the working conditions in their working place anymore. They seized the owner and demanded their rights. And the reactions from the French working class were impressive.

“The film triggered a terrible scandal. In the cities that showed the film, factory workers would go on strike. At the owner’s pressure, cinemas removed the film.”

Being closely watched by a government that wasn’t so acceptive to such artistic manifestations, Karmitz decided to open his own cinema and carry on bringing to the public films that matter.

“In 1974 I opened the first cinema close to Place Bastille. There wasn’t anything like that in the area. There was a karate cinema and a porno cinema.”

Today, the MK2 film empire means 75 screens in France and 64 in Spain.

In his 40 year career, Marin Karmitz has produced 108 films and has distributed over 350 in his cinemas.

Among the great director with which he has worked, there is also Lucian Pintilie.

“I had heard of Lucian Pintilie, he was well-known in France as a theater director. One day, a producer who had just produced a film, The Oak, told me that the film wasn’t finished, that he didn’t know exactly how to finish it, and asked if I wanted to join the team.

I watched the film, I thought it was wonderful, but very long. I said “yes” immediately, on the condition that we cut it, because, otherwise nobody will see it, and the whole point is that the world watches your film.

That is how I started working with Lucian Pintilie.

– Did he agree to cut the film?

– Yes, that is something typical to all the great directors with whom I have worked. They have always agreed to cut the film, if convinced with arguments. Only small, weak directors don’t agree to cut their films, they don’t accept criticism from others.

Then we made An Unforgettable Summer, Terminus Paradis and Too Late.

I loved Lucian Pintilie, a very cultivated, unforgettable person. As a filmmaker he had an extraordinary talent and a strong personality, he would speak about political and social realities, but with a very personal touch.

There are some directors that show a story, but don’t add to it. Like a news story. He didn’t. He took reality and transformed it through his writing, his style, his dialogues, the way he directed actors.

I have wonderful memories of our working together, because it was a labor in a place of intelligence, a profound exchange in which each would say what he agrees on, what he doesn’t agree on, and why. Dialogue was one of questions, not of statements.

That is something rare.

I had the opportunity to work with such directors in my career. The ones with which I didn’t develop such a relation ship, I stopped working with them.”

Another unforgettable collaboration in Marin Karmitz was with the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. An admirer of Kieślowski’s Decalogue, Karmitz asked to meet with the director.

“I had produced the film Au revoir Les Enfants, by Louis Malle, which he loved. So he accepted to meet me.

We spent the entire afternoon talking about ethic, morals, life, philosophy. And at some point I told him that I would love to make a film with him. And I asked if he had any projects.

He told me that he was working on a project, what would become The double life of Veronique, and that there would be something else. He said “It’s a difficult project, I don’t know if you would be interested. I want to make a film about the three colors – red, white, blue. Liberté, egalité, fraternité.”

I said “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

Kieślowski’s trilogy, inspired by the colors of the French flag and the history of the three principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité made film history and brought the two filmmakers three Oscar nominations, The Golden Lion in Venice and numerous other nominations and awards.

In the producer’s office there is a framed photograph from the set of Blue, in which he stands next to the actress Juliette Binoche and the famous French photographer Robert Doisneau.

“Kieślowski was someone who, the same as Samuel Beckett, had an immense influence on me. Someone truly exceptional.”

“The relation ships I had with close directors were of intellectual intimacy.

At the core of this relation ship is the mutual respect, I am the producer, you are the director, each does his job and respects the others job. The goal is to remain together the best cake.

The death of Kieślowski was a great hit for me. The same for Pintilie, Charbron. Those were great losses for me.”

The many losses have determined, in the end, Marin Karmitz, to stop producing films. He has passed on his knowledge to his sons, who have taken over the MK2 business almost entirely.

The producer now dedicates his time to his passion for photography and contemporary art, having an impressive collection of photographs in the headquarters of the company. In recent years, he has organized several art shows in many countries, including works of art owned by him.

In fact, his work as a director and a producer is shown at the great museums of the world, such as MoMA or Centre Pompidou.

In all his biographies he is labeled a Romanian-French filmmaker and business man, although, to be fair, he has small ties to Romania.

There are still, nevertheless, some bonds that cannot be explained other than through his own feelings, sometimes even to his own surprise.

“I was in Cluj a while ago, at TIFF, to receive an award. I took my two sons because I wanted to show the Romania. It was mid-june and in Paris I had always been attracted to linden, I would always look for them and smell them, I didn’k know why.

So I was in Romania, I went to a park and was simply overwhelmed by the smell of linden. It was the smell of my childhood. Only then I realized why all my life I had been attracted to this smell.

The linden trees in Romania have a stronger smell than the ones in Paris.

All in all, my childhood memories make me nostalgic. I was strongly marked by my childhood, that’s a fact.”

On the other hand, the history that he experienced first hand, will not be forgotten.

“I will be honest, if it weren’t for my childhood memories, which create a very personal universe, I would not feel any affinity towards Romania. Romanians have killed 350.000 Jews. I was shocked to see that when I mentioned this in Romania, people would turn their heads.

When I mentioned Ceaușescu, they turned their heads again.

I was troubled for a long time by this silence and I believe that it is bad that a country isn’t able to acknowledge it’s history and it’s mistakes. All countries committed atrocities, but some acknowledged them and evolved differently. Romania, not so much.”

“A people cannot find it’s identity unless it sees it’s past correctly. This acknowledgement is necessary for all the peoples of the world.”

The reality of the current state of the world does not make the filmmaker hopeful. Even film does not bring him great satisfaction anymore, not financially, but artistically and human-wise.

He walks us out of the giant MK2 headquarters and I ask what good films he has seen lately. He confesses that he doesn’t go to the cinema anymore because he feels disappointed by recent films, so he prefers to spend most of his time in art galleries.

He recalls, however, that the last film that he liked was Drive my Car (Japan, 2021).

He still appreciates Romanian filmmakers who touch on social and political realities in their films and calls them “Pintilie’s students”. He believes that artists have a social responsibility and that their art should contribute to a better world.

“In all history, we had always had the option of choosing between humanity and barbarism, between building or destroying the world.

Now I think that we have entered a time of limitless destruction. We have forgotten our history and have disconnected from it.

For that, among others, it is also our fault, the artists.

In French cinema and others, except Romanian, filmmakers have disconnected from history or have gone to the extreme banalization of violence, which they have taken from American cinema. Violence for a show. It has become pleasurable in film to kill someone. And some spectators take pleasure in seeing someone kill somebody else. It’s awful, it’s bad.

We doubt the human being, human integrity.

The content has degraded a lot, it is filled with stereotypes, and images are selling like hot pastry. In this context, the one who makes the most sales has the biggest shop.

We should reflect more on the content that we make, not necessarily upon where it is shown – platforms, televisions.

If we still believe in human’s capacity to act human, then we will have the desire to see films in human conditions, quality content in the cinema.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post The smell of linden trees in Bucharest and a film empire in France. The fascinating story of Marin Karmitz, the Romanian-French film director and producer appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Versiunea în ROMÂNĂ

“I believe that I’m Romanian, Jewish, French and because I’ve travelled everywhere, I’m also a bit universal. Americans call people like myself Mid-Atlantic people, as if we were born in the middle of the ocean.”

Born in Bucharest in 1958, Radu Mihăileanu left Romania for good when he was only 22 years old. He was leaving Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorial regime and starting a new life in Paris, where he was to become an important film director.

He welcomed us in his apartment from a bourgeois and quiet neighbourhood of Paris, where he moved less than a year ago. He brought with him his entire collection of books, films, records and family photos, which now create a small museum of personal experiences and artworks that helped him become the man and artist he is today.

On the shelves of his bookcase we see the clapperboards from his famous films – Train de vie, Le Concert, Va, vis et deviens or La source des femmes. Nearby, on the wall, hangs a painting of his father, Ion Mihăileanu, holding the clapperboard with “Le Concert” written on it.

“On my films I had a tradition, that my father held a speech in front of the crew at the beginning of the shoot. The speech would always revolve around the idea that love is the source of life and that without love we can not do anything.”

His father was a famous Romanian journalist and translator. His real name was Mordechai Buchman. He managed to escape a concentration camp during World War 2, changing his name to Ion Mihăileanu. He wrote the screenplay for Lucian Pintilie’s first feature film, Sunday at 6, a love story inspired by the lives of Radu Mihăileanu’s parents.

“I vividly remember that when Pintilie and my father were working in my father’s study, we weren’t allowed to come in.“

“We were young, my brother and I are in one of the scenes from the film. My father and Pintilie were seeing each other oftenly, after that I saw him again in Paris and my film Trahir (Betrayal) was co-produced by Pintilie’s production company in Romania.”

A friend of his father helped young Radu Mihăileanu to settle in Paris: the great French writer André Malraux, back then the French minister of culture.

“Malraux’s novel, La Condition Humaine (The Human Condition), was first translated to romanian by my father. And not in any way, but by hand, with a pencil. The even wilder story is that my father’s manuscript was lost, so he had to translate it again, also with a pencil. Then he wrote a letter to Malraux, who was so impressed that he invited my father to France to meet him.”

Among the books from his family’s library brought to Paris by Radu Mihăileanu, there is also a book signed by Malraux for Ion Mihăileanu.

Although settled in Paris for 40 years, Radu Mihăileanu recounts with great detail memories from Romania, but most of all the context in which he left the country.

He perfectly recalls that it was the 14th of november 1980 when his mother and brother took him to the airport. He was leaving for Israel under the pretext of visiting his grandfather in Tel Aviv, taking advantage of a special political context, in which Ceaușescu, wishing to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, was allowing some jewish people to visit Israel, even receiving money from The United States of America.

He knew that he was leaving the country for good and he was living in fear that his family could be harmed at any time.

“In Romania it was November, it was snowing, in Israel it was 23 degrees. I knew that I had to reach and live with little money in Paris, where it was also winter. So I had to bring more winter clothes, no Israel clothes.

In my suitcase I only had summer clothes. But I was lucky that it was cold in Romania, so I had my coat on. Underneath I had 3 sweaters and 2 shirts and I was praying that they wouldn’t take my clothes off. And they only looked in my suitcase.”

Obviously touched, with his voice trembling, Radu Mihăileanu relives the moment of separation from his family.

“We were at the Otopeni airport, at the checkpoint and there was a door separating us. Every once in a while I would see my mother appear and disappear and I couldn’t understand why. Years later, they told me that she was crying, because she imagined that she’d never see me again.

And my brother would tell her “you can’t cry, he’s leaving for two weeks, officially, if they see you cry, they’ll understand that he’s not coming back.”

After some adventures in Israel, where he received his French visa only through the intervention of a friend of Malraux and his father – Jean Houdart, he reached Paris on the 4th of december 1980, where he had been admitted into IDHEC (L’Institut des hautes études cinématographiques), the most prestigious film school in Europe. 

“I had a code with my parents, when I would reach Paris, they were supposed to scold me, in order to protect my brother. So, my father scolded me a great deal, saying things like “you’re not my son anymore, why didn’t you tell us?”, everything so that it would seem that they hadn’t known and would not suffer repercussions“

“And I would write many letters that I knew were being read. Most of the time, we would write questions and answers that weren’t actual anymore, because it would take one month for them to get from Paris to Bucharest. If I would write that I am sad, they would respond two months later asking me why I was sad, and I already wasn’t sad anymore.”, he relates now smiling.

“Everything was lagged, but it was amusing. Everything was absurd.”

An absurdity of romanian people that found itself echoed in his films. Today he is one of the most well known film directors in France in the last 30 years and is part of a work group that will change that status of the César Awards.

Before he got to where he is today, he lived the life of an immigrant.

Once in Paris, some friends of his father’s found a cellar for him, where he was permitted to live, in return for cleaning the building, as a janitor. There he cleaned the steps and delivered mail.

“It was a small room, a bathroom. I turned it into a bedroom that had become the exact dimensions of the bed. There I had the salon, the kitchen, and the toilet was outside, in the yard.

But we were students and almost all of us were poor. I took girls there, we had parties. We had 2 square meters and we would party, it wasn’t a problem.”

“I would also work odd-jobs, whatever I could get. A photography lab, cleaning the staircase, like any other student. It’s normal here.“

He ended up making films “out of accident”. Initially, in Romania, being fascinated by the dancer Miriam Răducanu, he wanted to become a dancer himself.

“But I realized that it was tough, physically I had to work a lot, and I was lazy. I said that if a dancer was out of the question, then an actor should be easier. But my father said that I couldn’t memorize the poems in school, that my memory wasn’t good.”

He had to get into college, in order to be able to migrate, so his father pointed him toward a technical profile, even though he didn’t want to have anything to do with maths, physics or chemistry, he wanted to work with words, in the arts. Then, there was the pressure of enrolling in the army. If he didn’t get into college, he would be enlisted for a year and four months, but if he did get into college, he would only be enlisted for 9 months.

“If I got into the long period of enrollment, it was possible that I would be sent to the Danube-Black Sea canal, and people were dying over there.”

“So I searched the list for the college with the lowest admission grade and I found Hydrotechnical. So I was admitted into Hydrotechnical and I served the short army term.

In the army there were bedrooms with 50 bunks, where everyone was crying that their girlfriends were leaving them, and I started making them laugh. I was acting like a clown and there were some playing the guitar. So I got the impression that I could still be an actor.”

In the army he had to prepare an artistic moment for the patriotic contest The Singing of Romania.

“I didn’t know any patriotic poems, I didn’t know anything patriotic. So I made a pantomime show where I ridiculed Ceaușescu, I would walk into walls and the colleagues in the audience were laughing hard. The Secret Police man noticed me and then I realized that I had done something stupid, I thought that I was done.“

“The colonel was a great guy, he called me into his office and gave me a prize for interpretation, but told me : never do this again, ever! The Secret Police man has it in for you. To forgive you, you prepare the regiment’s team to move forward in The Singing of Romania.

I told him that I wasn’t doing anything political, but asked him to allow me to put on a show for ourselves, to cheer up the colleagues, who were very sad.

That’s how I started writing shows for the regiment, to keep us in good spirits. And the colonel was so pleased that he allowed us to put on a show at the girl’s high school in Turnu Măgurele. That sounds like a Milos Forman film.”

“There was our unit, in front of us we had the all-girl high school and the cemetery next to it. So, many times, we had love stories happening in the cemetery.“

When he came back from the army he wanted to withdraw from college, but the dean didn’t let him. He made him stay for another year and prepare the college’s team for The Singing of Romania. That’s how he made an illegal theater crew, made of Hydrotechnical students and former army colleagues.

They would go to universities’ halls and put on spontaneous shows. Their shows were always about a king and queen from 15th century England, but they were actually symbols for Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu. The Secret Police started questioning him and that’s when his father started preparing his departure from the country. He wanted to study theater directing, but in France there was only film school available.

“At film school in Paris I started taking photographs, watching 3 films per day, to catch up with my other colleagues. I had only seen Russian or Czech films, other than that, I didn’t know anything.”

“That’s how I fell in love with cinema and the gros-plan, which we don’t have in the theater.“

In 2018 he directed his first opera show, Carmen, at the invitation of the Paris Opera. Ion Caramitru invited him, as well, to direct a show at the National Theater in Bucharest, but he says that he hasn’t found a play that suits him yet and hasn’t got the time to write a play himself.

“I am stuck with the theater virus, the dream is still there, to come back one day and do theater. I wish I could write a play and bring my madness into the theater. But I need time to write.”

His connection to writing started from his teens and still eats away at him.

“I used to write stupid poems. Ion Caraion, a good friend of my father’s, was a guest at our house a lot. My film Trahir is inspired a great deal from his life. My mother covered him when he got out of prison, because he wasn’t allowed to write. Someone else would sign his books as authors and Caraion would get paid.

My father told him: look, my son writes poems, if you want to look at them. And Caraion said (he laughs), I will never forget: They are very bad, but don’t stop.”

He meant that I may never be a great poet, but he saw that I liked writing and that if I wanted to do it, I should learn to write by writing. And I would write a lot, every day. It was great advice. I still write poetry, mostly for myself, but I also wrote for theater, we were crazy about the theater back then.

My father was friend with all the great theater directors. I would see these people at our house, Ciulei, Pintilie. I’ll never forget Ciulei’s The Tempest, with Rebengiuc, it’s a masterpiece, I’ve never seen such a powerful Shakespeare play. Through Shakespeare’s lines, we read  Ceaușescu’s dictatorial regime.”

A regime that left its mark on his life forever. Politics, dictatorship and the history of humanity have become essential components in all of his films, selected and awarded at the most important film festivals: Cannes, Berlin or Venice.

Radu Mihăileanu gives his characters dignity back, after a struggle for survival he manages to give them the feeling about which his father would speak at the start of his shoots – love.

“When you’re living in a dictatorship, the virus is forever. Yes, you free yourself, you go to cafe’s you read the papers, you’re in a democracy, but the virus is there, obsessive”

“What is beautiful in the arts is that one part of us is thinking, is aware, and one part is unconscious, it enters everything we create, without us realizing it.

And I love telling political stories through a human perspective, a natural one. My idols are Chaplin, Costa-Gavras, political filmmakers going through simple, normal things. That’s where you can feel the true consequence. And Pintilie’s The Reconstruction, those days, hit us terribly.”

In his turn, he has influenced directors that made history for Romania, in the last 25 years. A first assistant director at Train de Vie was Cristian Mungiu.

Mungiu was very thorough, he didn’t speak much. At the end of the shoot he showed me that he had made a short film, then he was in Cannes with another short film. And, of course, after that he won the Palme d’Or. Cristi was very shy, quiet. He worked very well, but he didn’t talk much.

Mungiu wasn’t the only future successful director who came in contact with  Mihăileanu’s art.

“When we were shooting Train de Vie in Vaslui, we were staying at the most important hotel in the city, owned by a very rich man, Adrian Porumboiu, who came to see me at dinner and said that he had a son who is 18 and wants to be a filmmaker, and if he could come the next day on set.

The anecdote is fabulous. He came and he stood, poor guy, 100 meters behind the camera, very far, he was very shy. And I said to my french assistant “He’ll never make cinema. He’s standing too far.”

When we saw each other, after he won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, I told Corneliu Porumboiu that I was happy that I was wrong.”

Mihăileanu is good friends with Corneliu Porumboiu, but mostly with Cristian Mungiu, with whom he is working on European cultural policy.

He is also still friends with his army colleagues and the ones from Hydrotechnical, who he sees every time he comes to Romania. He came to his home country to show his two sons their family roots.

Family and friends take a special place in one of his apartment’s rooms. Photos of his grandparents, parents, cousins, as well as ones of his friends, make a family and social tree, essential in the artist’s life.

“I’m a romanian. My films are absurde, they’re dark comedies. This is specific to Romanians, not the French. And a little jewish, with a more bright humour.

I’m french because I’ve been a little civilized and maybe too much. I prefer to remain, though, a little wild, barbaric, such as Le Concert.

I am the meeting point of these identities.”

“I can’t say that I’m a romanian like you, because I don’t live there anymore and I don’t feel the same shakes and the same joys. But I’m a romanian because that’s what’s flowing through my veins“

As a Frenchman, he has adopted the bohemian lifestyle and is enjoying going to cafe’s and meeting his friends. 90% of the time he rides his bicycle on the streets of Paris, sometimes he uses the subway and once a week, on Sundays, he takes the car. He does this when he goes to play tennis with his sons, somewhere on the outskirts of the city, because he can’t take the tennis bag on the bicycle.

He had a passion for the white sport ever since a child, when he played tennis at the Steaua Club. There he met Ilie Năstase, already a superstar in the world of tennis, who everyone idolized.

“We wanted him to play tennis with us, when he came to the club, but he wanted to play football, to have fun. And we would indulge him.”

Now, at the entrance of his apartment in Paris, hangs one of Ilie Năstase’s tennis rackets.

In football he gave up rooting for Romania after Hagi’s generation and has recently suffered when France was taken out from EURO 2020. At the EURO matches, his friends come over, they cook food from the countries playing, they drink wine and have a good time.

Aside from the moments he enjoys being alone, writing, reading, watching films, Radu Mihăileanu enjoys interacting with people.

“On my birthday, in isolation, on the 23rd of april, we were 200 people on zoom, each had a piece of cake, a candle, some champagne, wine, we played music, we danced. I recorded it, to keep the memory.”

He says that he’s an ecologist and was under the impression that the pandemic would provoke profound change in people.

“I hoped that the pandemic would make us more ecological, that we would reestablish certain life values, but when everything was open again, people were queueing at Zara. I was completely let down.”

“From an ecological point of view, the clock keeps ticking. As we’re delaying, it becomes irreversible. Planet Earth will still be here, it’s not going anywhere. Mankind will disappear, not the planet.”

He was also profoundly saddened by the antisemitic messages recieved by his friend, Maia Morgenstern and shows concern regarding extreme right political movements coming back.

“We took giant leaps in the last 80 years, in space, technology, medicine, but we cannot evolve in the field of human mentalities, the fascism and hatred that keep coming back.”

Nevertheless, despite a terrible history that he felt personally, he breathes love for life and humanity.

“- Do you believe that human nature is beautiful or ugly?

– It’s beautiful. If it wasn’t I’d kill myself. I love Cioran, but I remain positive. Life and everything surrounding us is a miracle. Birth is a miracle. We ask ourselves why we are here and what our purpose is, when there are so many in line, waiting to be born, asking when their time will come.

We are alive, surrounded by wonderful things. I go downstairs, I get the newspaper, I sit at the cafe and I look at people. It’s a miracle. You took the plane from Romania, you’re in Paris and we’re talking. A Miracle.

We go to the restaurant and we are amazed about how they prepared our food. There are 1000 miracles. But we forget them, that’s the problem.

We forget that we’re living constant miracles.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

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