23-07-2009

Production: Florin Iepan explores Odessa massacre

By Iulia Blaga

    Documentary filmmaker Florin Iepan (The One, the Only, the Real Tarzan; Children of the Decree; Bela Lugosi - The Fallen Vampire) is tapping a difficult subject, the massacre committed by the Romanian army on October 1941 on 20,000 Jews of Odessa.

    With this 90 minute documentary entitled Odessa the filmmaker doesn't wish to prove anything although he thinks that his country "had a fascist and anti-semitic past that it's high time to assume," as he told FNE.

    The project received a €68,430 grant from the National Cinema Centre (http://www.cncinema.abt.ro/), with an estimated budget of €350,000-400,000. The film is a Romanian-German coproduction between Florin Iepan's company Sub-Cult-Ura (site under construction) and Starcrest Media GmbH (www.starcrest-berlin.de). Other finances are to be confirmed.

    The project participated at the coproduction platform at Sunny Side of the Doc in La Rochelle last year.

    In October 1941, the Romanian army entered Odessa and established its headquarters in the former NKVD office. Mined by the Soviets, the building exploded and killed 90 Romanians. As a response, General Ion Antonescu ordered 200 communists executed for each Romanian killed, and the Jews taken hostages. The Jewish population of Odessa of 20,000 people was piled in nine barns in the village of Dalnic, and the barns were set on fire.

    Odessa will be more of an auteur documentary than History Channel type, combining archive footage with thoughts of ordinary people and personalities, and bringing in animation.

    Shooting began in summer 2008 and will continue until the end of the 2009.. The DOP is Rafael Vasilcin. The premiere has not yet been set.

    Production information

    Sub-Cult-Ura

    4 Învăţătorului str., Bl.69, Ap.4,

    Timişoara, Romania

    Phone: 0040 - 722.277.843

    Site under construction

    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

    Starcrest Media GmbH

    65 Alexanderstr.
    60489 Frankfurt

    Phone: 0049 - (069) 70.79.8640

    http://www.starcrest-berlin.de/