Romanian director Marian Crişan is currently filming Warboy. With an estimated budget of €700,000, the film is co-produced by two Romanian companies, Rova Film and Chainsaw Europe, and the Moldovan Parmis Film.
Written by Marian Crişan, the film takes place towards the end of World War II. Nicu, a teenager, is very attached to his family’s horses. The army is seizing civilian property to survive. To prevent the soldiers requisitioning his horses, Nicu decides to take them into the mountains – an extremely dangerous undertaking.
In an interview with Cineuropa, Marian Crişan explains that the idea of making a film about the war came from his grandfather’s stories. “He had these memories of 1944 and 1945, when he was a teenager, taking care of a rich neighbour’s horses. Warboy grew out of these memories and from the question: what did war mean for a child at that time? What does it mean to a child in any era?”
He also wants to revisit life for ordinary people during that period. According to Crişan “the majority of [Romanian] films made in the 1970’s and 1980’s deceived audiences with their nationalist approach. They said nothing about the families who stayed on the land. That’s what interested me: making a war film in 2022, but without heroic acts or trenches. On the other hand, I’m trying to convey that this story of a teenager in 1944 is universally valid, regardless of when or where the war is happening.”
The Cineuropa article emphasises the film’s originality because it is historical. The low budgets of most Romanian filmsmeans there are very few historical or war films, because they require higher than average production costs.
Financing films in Romaniaand in the Balkansgenerally is a problem facing many directors. Three of them: Radu Jude (Romania), Teona Strugar (Macedonia) and Vladimir Perišić (Serbia) discussed the problem in a French-language webinar organised by Courrier des Balkans “Où en est le cinéma dans les Balkans?”.
Sources: Cineuropa, Courrier des Balkans, Rova Films
