Marian Crișan, who won the Palme d’Or in Cannes for his short film “Megatron” as well as directing Locarno award-winning “Morgen” and HBO series “Silent Valley,” is gearing up to shoot his next project in Romania this August. “Holy Light” is a co-production between Crișan’s Rova Film banner, Moldova’s Alternative Cinema, and Slovakia’s Nukleon Frame and financed through CNC Romania, CNC Moldova, and the Slovak Audiovisual Fund.
Speaking with Variety out of his homeground at the Transilvania Film Festival, where he is presenting at the Pitch Stop as the producer for Ilinca Straton and Eugen Dediu’s “At King’s Gate,” Crișan explains how the drama was inspired by the titular Orthodox Holy Fire ceremony. The ritual occurs every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on the day before Easter and consists of the lighting of a fire — said to emerge miraculously — that is then distributed to Orthodox countries including Romania.
“From the big cities, the ceremony goes to small cities and villages, so, theoretically, the holy light from the torn of christ reaches all corners of Romania in about six hours,” says the director. “The film is set in the modern day and follows a child and his father in a small village in the Romanian mountains as they go down to the airport to get this light for the church in their village. It’s a spiritual journey and a coming-of-age tale but really condensed, told in this space of 12 hours from the morning till midnight.”
The director emphasizes the depth of this coming-of-ager, explaining how the child eventually gets lost from the father and has to go up the mountain again by himself — a biblical image that also works as a potent central metaphor. “As he walks up, he faces questions about the meaning of life, and the idea of the holy light itself: What is it? Is it really sacred? Can it perform miracles? In the mind of this innocent boy, he wonders if resurrection is real and if light can give life back.”
To cast the main role of the 10-year-old, Crișan held open auditions and saw over 200 child actors, eventually landing on Andrei Voicu. “It’s hard to find such a young actor and I look for talent that is fit for cinema, I am not after theater kids,” the filmmaker says of his auditioning process. “Playing in the theater is different from interacting with a camera and understanding the space of cinema. Andrei is a miracle, he already played small parts in a TV series so has experience already and he is absolutely incredible.” Marius Cordoş and Ofelia Popii join the young actor as part of the main cast.
Commenting on co-producing with Moldova and Slovakia, the filmmaker explains that budgets in Romania “fit” with the ones available in neighboring countries, such as Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary. “It’s logical that we go with partners with the same size as us because if you go to Germany, the conditions are way too high for us,” he adds. “Even to go to the market in Berlin you need to go beyond 1.5 million euros, but our films usually cost around 700,000, so we don’t go to that market. We are a smaller country and don’t have big distribution chains to extend the lives of our films so we are not a big industry.”
On the subject of European festivals, Crișan says he is hoping to finish post-production on the film in time to make the Cannes selection window. “Romanian films have played major festivals for over 20 years now and it’s great to see our cinema continue to find new New Waves,” points out the director, who finishes by saying that, despite the “challenging” nature of shooting with a child actor in the mountains, he is very much looking forward to kicking off production after Transilvania Film Festival wraps.