Andreea Cristina Borțun

During Saari Residence, I will be working on Égalité, a feature film part of the trilogy on love in the rural, that I am currently developing. The world of the Romanian villages in the South—a formative place for me—and their underrepresented stories is one that I have formed a strong attachment to over the past six years, a constant presence in my recent projects. 

While at Saari, I will mostly delve into archival research and writing. Égalité is meant to be a period piece set in 1835 Romania, during the year in which a utopian social experiment took place – the phalanstery of Scăieni. It tells the story of a woman who is part of the phalanstery, while struggling with alcoholism. Looking into literary works and testimonies of women suffering from this condition, I hope to understand what it meant back then for a woman to drink more than it was socially acceptable? What were the consequences she would suffer? The concepts of labour and work and the reasons for which these utopian societies were so embraced at the time, are as well subject matters I wish to further explore.

Andreea Cristina Borțun works as a transdisciplinary filmmaker, visual researcher and educator, teaching at The National Film School in Bucharest. She believes screenwriting thrives on cross-pollination.

All her recent projects are rooted in anthropological research. She combines the theoretical, pedagogical and field work with her artistic practice. This usually involves a process type of filmmaking, focused on a close observation of environments and communities, and their specific ways of relating sensorially to the world. She uses the visual and audio mediums as extensions of her own perception.

Her work is usually a mix of hybridity, sometimes coming from fiction and moving towards documentary, sometimes the other way around. Her previous films have been selected in Cannes’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Toronto or Karlovy Vary.

Since 2014 Andreea co-curates and imagines experimental narrative methodologies for cinema, at the Pustnik International Screenwriters Residency.

Andreea is currently conducting her Phd, focusing on alternative screenwriting practices, drawn from anthropological research.