Breakfast with Cadoul de Craciun

An interview with Bogdan Muresanu, director of Cadoul de Craciun

 What motivated you to set the film at that time? Did you have direct experience of the Ceausescu period in Romania?
I have always been interested in this period perhaps because I grew up in Communism so that I could experience on my skin the benefits of this Brave New World. Also my family, as most of Romanian families at the time, have been deeply affected by Ceausescu s brainless and savage policies. In a way, I have lived similar stories to the one depicted in the film though, of course, the script is a complete fiction.

 What sort of research did you carry out?
I have studied also Political Philosophy and I have read a lot of books on the period but in this case I have also conducted a research on pieces of news from that precise day (Radio Free Europe for instance), documentaries, archives and articles from news papers. Then I have spoken to many witnesses of those so peculiar days so that I got this idea of shooting the film almost in a documentary key.

 Are you working mostly in Romania at present? Or more internationally? How did you start out in filmmaking?
As a director, I am working mainly in Romania (currently on a short animation) but as a script writer I have various projects from Italy, Bulgaria and so on.

 The idea works very well as a short film. Do you have any plans to direct features? What genres would you like to explore?
I do. Right now I’m actually working on a feature that expands the idea from the short. So in a near future l will stick to black comedy but, since I’m also about to finish an animation short, I might explore a feature animation any time soon (in the next years).

 Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
I like short films for the sense of freedom you have working on them. You can go all the way exploring the idea you have in any type of format, manner, style independent on politics that muddy a bit the world of features.

Cadoul de Craciun is being shown in International Competition I5.