Elena, Italian by adoption but born in Romania, is about to turn 30 years old and feels the need to discover the missing piece of her story: her biological family. To do so, she has decided to make a journey by car from Piacenza to Bucharest with an unusual and surprising travel companion: her newfound brother Gerard. The film will be an adventure on the road, a journey that through the search for their origins, retraces the last 30 years of European history, investigating the evolution of words like “Union”, “Boundaries” and “Identity”.

Matteo Pecorara is producing through Italy’s Small Boss Productions in coproduction with Irina Malcea from Romania’s Luna Film. The budget is 268,282 EUR, of which 80% is in place, Irina Malcea told FNE.

The projects is supported by the Regione Emilia-Romagna, the Italian Tax Credit, the Romanian Film Centre (CNC), Eurimages, and Al Jazeera Documentary.

Shooting took place in November 2021 and will continue in February 2022. The film is being shot in Italy, Hungary, Slovenia and Romania, with 70% of the shooting in Romania. Romanian DoP Carmen Tofeni is lensing. Tofeni was nominated as Best Cinematographer at the Gopo Awards 2021 for Ivana the Terrible directed by Ivana Mladenovic and produced by microFILM (Romania) in coproduction with Dunav1984 (Serbia).

The Land You Belong is set to be finished in the autumn of 2022. The premiere is not yet confirmed. CATS&DOCS is handling the sales. Local distributors in Italy and Romania are not known yet.

Production Information:

Producer:
Small Boss Productions (Italy)

Coproducer:
Luna Film (Romania)

Credits:
Director: Elena Rebeca Carini
Scriptwriter: Elena Rebeca Carini
DoP: Carmen Tofeni