YOU DON’T BELONG HERE explores the intimate, yet fragile relationship between a father and son, masculinity, and parental expectations. A film will be screened in Competition Programme – Narrative Feature Film.
More than fifteen years later after his debut feature If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, Romanian director Florin Şerban returns to the subject of youth caught up in the world of crime and violence, but this time from the perspective of a father who slowly becomes aware of the fact that he does not truly know his own son. In You Don’t Belong Here, Şerban offers a quiet and observational visual style that allows the viewr to become a silent witness to the horrifying events as they unfold.
Your debut feature If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival back in 2010 and was screened at the Sarajevo Film Festival later the same year. Looking back, how did the success of your debut feature shape your path as a filmmaker
Actually, my love affair with Sarajevo Film Festival started couple of years back. Firstly, back in 2008, when I was writing the script of If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, I was part of a CineLink programme in Sarajevo, a writing programme with script doctors and tutors. At that programme the script won a production grant that really helped me during the actual production of the film. Also, we got our co-producer from the CineLink Co.Production Market in Sarajevo. Then, after shooting, in 2009, when we could not complete the film’s post-production, Sarajevo jumped in again, and we won again in CineLink, a grant from Post-Republic. This is how we actually finished the film. So, my debut is closely tied with Sarajevo Film Festival, so much more than just the projection in 2010. It would have been much harder, if not impossible without it.
My debut and the win in Berlin, both the Silver Bear and Alfred Bauer Award for Innovation in Cinema, jump started my career as a filmmaker. After that win, as a filmmaker, I could have gone anywhere. It was not just the prizes; it was also the fact that I won big in Berlin with my first feature.
If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle focused on a young man inside a juvenile correctional facility, whereas your new film, You Don’t Belong Here, follows a father dealing with a son who became involved in violence. Do you feel like with this project you returned to some of the themes of your debut, but this time with a shifted perspective?
Totally. In my films, so far, I’ve been focused on two things mainly – love and coming-of-age. BOX (2015) is on love and coming-of-age. Love 1. Dog (2018), also part of Sarajevo Film festival some years ago, won couple of prizes here, and Love 2. America (2020) are about love. My next film is also focused on a teenager, a girl this time. It will be called Ela or The Memoirs of Dutiful Daughter from Romania.
The film is centered around a father who slowly realizes he does not truly know his own son. When you came up with the initial idea for the film, did you begin with the father’s perspective, or was that a decision that you came up with later on?
Actually, initially, the father was the mother. A single mother who has no idea about the secret life of her teenage son. This is how it all started, some 4-5 years ago. Many drafts later, the father took the place of the mother. But, indeed, it has always been about the parent being the center of the story, not the teenager.
How did you approach shaping and directing the relationship between Adrian Văncică and Teodor Butănescu so that the bond between father and son felt emotionally authentic? What is most important to you when working with actors?
I usually go through very long casting processes, that at least two years, and many times the casting starts from the writing phase. Because of that, the casting director is one of the key elements in my artistic process. For the past ten years I worked with Cătălin Dordea, an amazing casting director, a film director through education. We think alike in many ways. Casting is important to me because putting many faces to the characters as I am writing helps me find the right shape of the characters, the right tone of the voices. Once I am done casting, I rewrite the whole dialogue to fit the actors I casted.
Every film is quite different in terms of working with actors because of the story and the actors. For this one I had to match Adrian Văncică, one of the most reputable actors of his generation, with lots of experience in film and TV, with Teodor Butănescu, a very young actor. I actually started with Teodor and had him join the Acting program of Școala de Film (The Film School), a cinema school that I am running together with some colleagues in Bucharest, Romania, a lot of actors of this film come from this school. I needed to make sure that Teodor has the right tools as a cinema actor. Teodor is extremely gifted, very bold in his acting choices, hard-working, a real pleasure to work with, but at the start he lacked the means to put all these to work as a cinema actor. So, after some work together at the Școala de Film, I could feel that he is ready to jump in, and so he did.
When it came to casting the character of the father I did not struggle that much. I had many actors that came to audition, and many of them did good, but Adrian was really cut for this part. It happens very seldom to me to see an actor and say – “He is the one.” It was like that with Adrian.
Once the casting was over, the relation between the two came very naturally. It was the relation between two actors that share a lot in common: passion, skills, generosity. It happened also because Adrian was very generous with Teodor. We rehearsed a lot for this film, every scene was heavily rehearsed, not one line is improvisation, everything had a thought behind. Again, the process is very different from one film to another, and this was the appropriate process for this one.
There is a lot of talk in the film about the desire to be important, exceptional, even extraordinary. In the context of the film, do you think those are closely tied to the ideas of masculinity and the pressure to become a certain type of man? Were you interested in exploring how these expectations affect not only men’s relationship with themselves, but also the way they parent their sons and connect with them?
For me, this film is not only about social and racial differences, about morals and values, but about a certain type of masculinity that is put in question in our times. Maybe for the right reasons. Or not. Who knows, this is not for me to decide, this is a very personal option for everyone, a decision with a lot consequence.
The type of masculinity in question is one of The Exceptional Man. The man who is sort of entitled, the man for whom the rules have to bend, the one who creates the differences, the one that brings civilization, the one who shades light into dark places, Homo Praestans, the one that rules.
My generation, men in their 40’s and 50’s, and all the previous post-War generations, especially in the European countries, could really understand this model, because we were conditioned to follow it. And this model has its values, but certainly, its obvious downsides, especially when it is tied to frustration. And especially when in the family there is nobody to balance it.
The main character is really a product of this time and place, somebody who starts questioning his life choices and his reasons.
There are a lot of long, static shots that feel very deliberate, often giving a viewer a chance to observe the situation, rather than immediately explaining everything that is happening. How did you work with the director of photography Liviu Marghidan to create the visual style of the film?
I think this was the appropriate style for this film. You need to be a silent observer; the drama has to unfold in front of your eyes. The drama has to be unaware of you, and you need to forget you are in the seat.
I really enjoyed working with Liviu, and this style is something that we came up together for this particular story. We will shoot another film in about a month and the style could not be more different. I do believe that we complement each other, and I feel we are good on the set together. I am sort of restless; my mind goes in all directions all the time, self-aware and impatient, always polite, but not fun to be around. He is very grounded, very generous, big hearted, funny, a really great person to be around. Kind of works well, I think.
In addition to writing and directing the movie, you have also taken on a role of the editor of the film. How different are those three creative processes for you? Does each role help you think about the film from the fresh perspective, or are there some challenges that come from it?
I am also the main producer of my films. It feels very natural to me, as all my films are very personal. I really believe in the films that I do, I think they make a difference, so I really feel that I need to be as invested as possible.
Yes, they are downsides, and the biggest is that I make few movies. It takes me a long time to do it, and I am actively trying to reduce that time without compromising. Another possible downside is that I work a lot alone on this and sometimes tend to lose perspective. I am actively working on that as well.
Every story is shaped by the place where it comes from. Are there aspects of You Don’t Belong Here that could have only come from Romania, or do you think the themes of the film are universal? What do you hope audiences outside Romania take away from the film?
I truly believe that this is a film for a wider audience in Romania and outside Romania. They just need to be patient and self-aware.
