The Rest Is Silence

In 1911 a young director decides to make a film about the war Romania fought against the Ottomans in 1877. Nobody has attempted anything of the kind; cinema in the country has barely begun. He finds a rich producer, asks the army for extras, and takes on old generals who fought in the war as advisers. Then he discovers that the generals remember the war differently from one another. Nae Caranfil's film starts from a production that was actually made: "The Independence of Romania", completed in 1912 by Grigore Brezianu and Leon Popescu. The telling does not deliver history as a lesson; it turns the making of a film into the comic material. Who will look like a hero, who will play the enemy, where the money goes. Marius Florea Vizante takes the lead.