04/07/2008

Shooting on Radu Jude’s debut feature, the Romanian/Dutch co-production The Happiest Girl in the World, which began on June 16 at the film’s main location, downtown Bucharest, is set to wrap on July 12.

Based on a screenplay by Augustina Stanciu and Jude, the film tells the story of Delia, a Romanian lower-middle-class teenage girl who comes to Bucharest with her parents to claim the prize she has won in a soft drink contest – a brand-new car – and to shoot a commercial.

Everything seems fine until it becomes clear that Delia and her parents have different views on what they should do with the car. While the girl wants to keep it, her mother and father would like to sell it and open a small business with the money. The argument begins on the set of the commercial, Bucharest’s University Square.

The key word for the project is debut. Director Radu Jude, main actress Andreea Bornea (a 17-year-old high school student) and theatre actress Violeta Haret (who plays the girl’s mother) are all feature film first-timers, while local stars Andi Vasluianu, Serban Pavlu and Doru Catanescu play supporting roles.

The weather has so far been fine in Bucharest, allowing the film crew to stick to the initial schedule, which should mean that they soon move to their second and final location, a highway motel 36 kilometres from Bucharest.

Jude made it big on the short film festival circuit with his Sundance Special Jury Award-winning The Tube with a Hat (2007), selected at over 50 festivals worldwide. For The Happiest Girl in the World, he teams up again with Ada Solomon’s HiFilm, the company behind his latter three shorts, including The Tube with a Hat.

The Netherlands’ Circe Films is co-producing the picture, while additional financers include the Romanian Film Fund, the Romanian National Television, HBO, the Hubert Bals Fund, Japanese television NHK and a Media Programme development grant. Financing was closed mid-May, 2008, for a total budget of €650,000.