Ana-Maria Comănescu
Writer / Director
Romania
Ana-Maria Comănescu is a Bucharest-based writer-director and tutor at the UNATC, the Romanian film school that she has attended herself. After graduation, she spent some years gathering on-set experience, while developing her debut feature through multiple workshops and pitching markets, such as Sarajevo Talents and Midpoint Feature Launch. She has made four shorts before her feature, „Horia”, a road movie co-produced between Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, had its premiere in Tallinn Black Nights Festival in 2023. Her films are all quite different, though they share one key element – humour – proof that she strongly believes in not taking art, or life, too seriously.
Project
Paradox
Shortly before the winter holidays, the city of Bucharest becomes messy. Cold nights grow longer, people feel lonelier – so do Mili and the small web of people around her. Mili is a cynical young woman who claims no satisfaction from obsessively taking on the healthiest habits and life decisions. But she is not the only one feeling lonely and sexually frustrated – everyone she meets is. When the local comedy club initiates an „open mic” night, she decides to give it a try. Getting up on stage is the least of her worries, anyway, as variously frustrating interactions push her to the edge of a nervous breakdown. The others are coping with difficulties themselves, whether it’s her friend, her boss or her new neighbour. They collectively end up at a party that will comically put them all through uncomfortable circumstances by being a more intimate affair than they had expected. Individual existential crises will collide in a mesh of hopes, feelings and libidos.
