Romania Ana-Maria Comănescu is a Bucharest-based writer-director and tutor at the UNATC, the Romanian film school that she has attended herself. After graduation, she spent some years gathering on-set experience, while developing her debut feature through multiple workshops and pitching markets, such as Sarajevo Talents and Midpoint Feature Launch. She has made four shorts before her feature, „Horia”, a road movie co-produced between Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, had its premiere in Tallinn Black Nights Festival in 2023. Her films are all quite different, though they share one key element – humour – proof that she strongly believes in not taking art, or life, too seriously .
PROJECT
Paradox
Shortly before the winter holidays, the city of Bucharest becomes messy. Cold nights grow longer, people feel lonelier – so do Mili and the small web of people around her. Mili is a cynical young woman who claims no satisfaction from obsessively taking on the healthiest habits and life decisions. But she is not the only one feeling lonely and sexually frustrated – everyone she meets is. When the local comedy club initiates an „open mic” night, she decides to give it a try. Getting up on stage is the least of her worries, anyway, as variously frustrating interactions push her to the edge of a nervous breakdown. The others are coping with difficulties themselves, whether it’s her friend, her boss or her new neighbour. They collectively end up at a party that will comically put them all through uncomfortable circumstances by being a more intimate affair than they had expected. Individual existential crises will collide in a mesh of hopes, feelings and libidos .
