Sergei Loznitsa
He was born on 5 September 1964 in the city of Baranovich in Belarus (then in the former Soviet Union). His family later moved to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where the future director will graduate from high school.
In 1981 he was admitted to the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, where he studied applied mathematics and control systems, and in 1991 he passed the entrance examination at the Moscow Film Institute. The following years he will study with the appreciated Georgian director Nana Djordjadze. In 1997 he graduated with a degree in film directing and production.
His first feature films are My Joy / Schastye moe (2010) and In the Fog / V tumane (2012). Both had their world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where In the Fog was awarded the FIPRESCI prize. Years later, the documentary Maidan (2014), about the Ukrainian Revolution, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, as well.
This is followed by the feature film The Event / Sobytie (2015), which traces the dramatic consequences of the August 1991 coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The film had its premiere as part of the selection at Venice Film Festival. A year later, also in Venice, Loznitsa released Austerlitz, a documentary that can also be seen at this year’s Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest.
In 2018, the director presented to the public no less than three films, all premiering at prestigious festivals. The first is Victory Day, filmed in Berlin’s Treptower Park, which houses a memorial to the Soviet army’s victory over Nazi Germany. This film premiered in the Berlinale selection. This was followed by the premiere of Donbass, selected in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and rewarded with the award for Best Director. Finally, The Trial, for which the director used archive footage of the first of the Moscow Trials of the 1930s, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in the fall of the same year.
In 2019 comes State Funeral, a documentary released in Venice and then selected in dozens of festivals around the world. In 2021, the director returns with Babi Yar. Background, about the massacre of 30,000 Jews by Nazi troops in September 1941. The documentary received the L’Œil d’or Special Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival will have its Romanian premiere at Les Films de Cannes in Bucharest.
Victor Rebengiuc
It is without a doubt the most easily recognizable name of the Romanian theatre and film world, with over 150 roles that recommend him as one of the most versatile actors, managing to pass easily from tragedy to comedy or from negative characters to positive ones. Victor Rebengiuc turned 88 in February.
He made his film and theatre debut relatively early, but received national and international recognition for his role in Forest of the Hanged (1965), directed by Liviu Ciulei, a film selected in the Cannes Film Festival competition and awarded Best Direction.
The roles in Tănase Scatiu (1976), Why Do the Bells Ring, Mitică? (1981) and Sand Cliffs (1982) are just some of the ones that consolidated his career, recommending him as one of the greatest Romanian actors of all time.
In honour of the popular actor, the festival Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest organizes, on the 29th of October, the event 88 minutes with Victor Rebengiuc. We will meet the actor in a unique setting, in a conversation with the famous television producer and journalist Cătălin Ștefănescu. The two will talk about roles, directors, great meetings and the essential moments in the professional life of Victor Rebengiuc, but also in the recent history of Romania.
Teodora Ana Mihai
She was born in Bucharest, during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. In 1988 her parents fled to Belgium, and Theodora joined them a year later. She discovered her love of cinema during her high school years in San Francisco, and then studied film at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Upon her return to Belgium, she began working in the film industry first as a screenwriter supervisor and second director, after which she devoted herself exclusively to her own projects. She directed Waiting for August, a documentary that won more than ten international awards, including trophies for Best Documentary at the Karlovy Vary Festival and Hot Docs, and was nominated for the European Film Academy Awards.
La Civil is her first feature film. The project participated in ScriptLab, an event within the Torino Film Lab, and was selected to participate, in the 2017-2018 season, in the Cinéfondation Residence. La Civil had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Award for Courage. In all her films, Teodora tries to find the balance between the social relevance of the story and the visual poetry of the frames.
Valdimar Jóhannsson
He was born in 1978 in northern Iceland and has been active in the home film industry for over two decades, collaborating with both local productions and big blockbusters filming in Iceland. He made his feature film debut with Lamb, selected this year in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and awarded with the Prize for Originality. Between 2013 and 2015 he attended doctoral courses at FilmFactory, the programme created by the renowned Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Valdimar lives in Reykjavík with his wife and daughters.
About the source of inspiration for Lamb, Valdimar says: “Without nature, humanity could not resist. In my opinion, nature is not only what we see around us, but also what we feel around us, therefore nature is closely related to the supernatural.
Nature cannot be controlled and we cannot predict how it will behave, and the year 2020 has proved to us enough times how fragile we are in front of it. We are facing forces beyond our power, and loss and tragedy can strike us at any time. In a world where almost anything can be achieved, let us not forget that we cannot oppose nature, just as we cannot fight our own destiny ”.
