Bucharest, April 2, 2012 – Transilvania Film has the honor to announce the premiere of the long-awaited film Somewhere in Palilula, directed by Silviu Purcărete.
The feature represents the debut of the renowned theatre director in film, being a grandiose project which brings together important names from the Romanian theatre and film scene. Art direction is signed by Helmut Stürmer and Dragoş Buhagiar, costumes by Lia Manţoc and music by Vasile Şirli. The director of photography is Adrian Silișteanu, constant collaborator of director Adrian Sitaru. The film is produced by Tudor Giurgiu, with Oana Giurgiu as executive producer.
Palilula is a little town lost somewhere on the map of the country. There, you don’t really know if people are lying, dreaming and living for real. At the hospital, the inmates are perfectly healthy, and one of the main „sports” is to watch the dissections in the morgue. The rest of the population is imbecile and charming, for ever isolated in drinking, partying and orgies.
Regime changes, deaths, fires and floods, none of these major, earth-shattering changes of the exterior world disrupts their lives. Alternatingly agitated and lazy, happy and melancholic, they are always there, together, in the middle of the world, on the oleander terrace, at the hospital and at hotel Boema.
Somewhere in Palilula tells the story of Serafim, a young doctor assigned on short-term at the hospital in Palilula, a little town lost somewhere on the map of the country, following the death of the previous pediatrician, old man Pantelică.
Serafim gradually adapts to this world and ends up, unawares, to belong here.
The main part is played by Áron Dimény, actor from the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, recognizable to film audiences from Europolis, by Cornel Gheorghiţă, also a main part, and from Hungarian productions such as Fateless, by Lajos Koltai (adaptation of Imre Kertesz’s novel) and Mansfeld.
The cast includes renowned Romanian actors such as George Mihăiţă, Constantin Chiriac, Răzvan Vasilescu, Sorin Leoveanu, Ofelia Popii.
Horaţiu Mălăele and Marius Manole round up a cast comprising 50 actors, most of them coming from the theatres with which Silviu Purcărete has worked with over the years: Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu, Marin Sorescu National Theatre in Craiova, The Hungarian Theatre in Cluj-Napoca and Vasile Alecsandri National Theatre in Iași.
Silviu Purcărete is one of the most acclaimed theatre directors in Romania and Europe. He’s been active for the past 30 years, putting on memorable shows, especially at the National Theatres in Craiova and Sibiu. He is a member of the European Theatre Union, winner of the Golden Globe Peter Brook Prize for best theatre direction in 1995 and of the Artistic Excellence Hamada Foundation (Edinburgh International Festival in 1991). His show Faust, staged at the Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu, was one of the main titles at Edinburgh in 2009, the biggest drama event in the world.
Starting April 2, you can meet the inhabitants of Palilula on the official website www.undevalapalilula.ro.
Every day, until April 20, when the film will premiere in cinema theatres, you are invited to discover who are characters around which the story of Somewhere in Palilula has been built.
On the website you will discover that Palilula is a one-of-a-kind world, and you will be able to better understand how this place, where the ludicrous coexists with the charming, has been conceived.
The film will be screened in cinemas as well as in some of the most important theaters in the country.
Somewhere in Palilula is produced by Libra Film, with the support of the Romanian Film Centre and the MEDIA Programme of the European Union. The script has received international acclaim, winning the 2005 „Balkan Fund” Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.
The film is distributed in Romania by Transilvania Film.