Bogdan George Apetri in development with The Deer
- The project will be looking for co-production partners at Berlin’s Co-Production Market
Seven years after his first feature, Outbound [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ana Ularu
film profile], Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri is in development with Unidentified [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (working title: The Deer), a Fantascope Films production selected in the Berlinale Co-Production Market. Producer Oana Iancu, whose other big project, Ana, mon amour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Călin Peter Netzer
film profile], is in the running for the Golden Bear in the festival’s main competition, tells Cineuropa that the project is looking for co-production partners from countries like Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Shooting is expected to start next winter, over 36 days, in a provincial town that has not been chosen yet. No actors have been chosen. The budget amounts to approximately €1.1 million, with €280,000 coming from the Romanian National Film Center. The budget is 70% in place, says the producer.
The screenplay was written by Iulian Postelnicu, with final drafts currently being improved by Apetri. The story centres on Florin, a 36-year-old police detective from a small provincial town. He will end up in a messy situation that will make him see theft and murder in a different light.
The producer tells Cineuropa that Unidentified is an action film with scenes of explicit violence. “We want to offer the audience an intense experience, so everything, from the locations to the actors, must look authentic and attractive.” As for Apetri, he says his main task in making Unidentified is “expressing the dramatic material in an engaging way, managing the delicate handling of the theme in such a way that it doesn't reach the audience in a preachy, overstated way, but as a hidden and inherent part of the whole, experienced differently by each viewer”.
Iancu says Unidentified will be finished in the second half of 2018, with a domestic release date depending on the film’s festival selections.
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