Radu Mihăileanu

Radu Mihăileanu (2018)

Radu Mihăileanu (born April 23, 1958 in Bucharest ) is a Romanian - French film director.

Life

Radu Mihăileanu, who grew up as a child of Shoah survivors in communist Romania, fled Romania in 1980 and lived in Israel for a few years before settling in France. He began studying film in Paris and from 1985 worked as an assistant director . The film Trahir was his directorial debut in 1993, which brought him back to his homeland in Romania. The Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern played the leading role in it. His international breakthrough came in 1998 with his second film Train of Life ( Train de Vie ), which tells the humorous and tragic story of a Jewish village during theSecond world war told. The villagers make an alleged deportation train , dress up as Nazis and try to escape to Palestine via the Soviet Union .

Mihăileanu presented his third cinema production in 2005 at the International Film Festival in Berlin in the Panorama section. In the film Go and Live ( Va, vis et deviens ) he tells the story of the Ethiopian Jews, thousands of whom were secretly brought to Israel in 1984. The film won the audience award. On April 4, 2006, the German film premiere took place in Berlin ( Hackesche Höfe ) in the presence of the director. In a subsequent dialogue with the audience, he addressed, among other things, his integration problems in France, but also his identity in Romania: “In France I am Romanian to the people and in Romania I am French. I don't speak any of the languages ​​without an accent and initially struggled with my identity. Today, however, I see this biculturalism as an enrichment. "

Mihăileanu's Das Konzert has also received several awards . The film tells the story of a former conductor of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater (played by Alexej Guskow), who fell out of favor decades ago because of his advocacy for fellow musicians of Jewish origin and who then earned his living as a caretaker. By chance he got the chance to perform Tchaikovsky's violin concerto with his old musician colleagues in Paris (with Mélanie Laurent, among others ).

In 2011, Mihăileanu in Quelle der Frauen focused on women from a small village in North Africa who refuse to fetch water from the mountain region following tradition. The film, with Hiam Abbass , Hafsia Herzi , Leïla Bekhti , Zinedine Soualem and Sabrina Ouazani in the leading roles, earned the director his first invitation to the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival .

Filmography

B = script, P = production, R = directing

• 1980: Les Quattre seasons (R)
• 1993: Trahir (B)
• 1998: Train of Life ( Train de vie ) (R, B)
• 2001: Pygmies wanted for film ( Les Pygmées de Carlo ) (R, B)
• 2005: Go and live ( Va, vis et deviens ) (R, P, B)
• 2009: The Concert ( Le Concert ) (R, B)
• 2011: Source of women ( La Source des femmes ) (R, P, B)
• 2016: The History of Love (R, B)

Web links

• Radu Mihăileanu in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• "I already cut while writing" , interview on critic.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Operation Moses .