VIII edition
Krzysztof Kieślowski ScripTeast Special Mention 2014
Life Beats Reality
Pogo, 11, comes into his sordid apartment in BUCHAREST, with a large bag full of clean clothes. While he is pinning the clothes on the line to dry he is filming different details with his cell phone. He hears swearing from the living room. He turns and sees a hanging man, his father. He stops the camera Freak,16, Pogo’s brother, is kicking his father’s dead body. Pogo tries to stop him. They fight for the first time ever near the dead body of their father who has hung himself.
Pogo’s is the story of a talented and very optimistic boy who does everything possible and impossible to bring his missing mother back home and to help his older brother to overcome his breakdown. The two brothers were left by their mother for a while, lived through the experience of their father committing suicide in a very different way. The older one, became extremely depressed and started doing drugs, the younger, became the head of the family, cooked and cleaned and ironed for the older one and finds solutions.
Pogo, the brave boy who matures way before his time in order to regain his mother and childhood transforms the harsh reality of life in a sordid peripheral neighborhood into a show of tenderness, naivety and imagination. He is determined to win with his film the TV contest for „autobiographical” films “Life Beats Reality”.
The dream world in which he unintentionally travels from his bright and childish dreams to those dark and heavy of his depressive brother express the vitality and strength of the character and stress the fight which is still to be fought, not only in everyday life but also at night, in his sleep: the depressive brother’s dreams which invade the optimistic one’s.
The film is about love of life, courage and talent. About how a work of art can change not only someone’s life but the reality.
Romania
Andreea Valean
Writer, play writer, director, producer. Graduated with MA of the University of Bucharest, Department for Sociology, Psychology and Pedagogy and BA at Department of Theater Directing.
Written by Andrea short “17 minutes late” was shown at Cannes Film Festival 2002 and two years later, her next short “Traffic” won Palm d’Or at Cannes Film Festival.
Works a lot as a director for a theatre in Romania and abroad. Among plays she has directed are “Green Hours”, “The Last Game of Taroc” (also wrote) “Rosia Montana”, “Don’t Cry We’ll All Meet on The Other Side”.
She is scriptwriter and associate producer of the movie “The Way I Spent the End of the Word”, Cannes Film Festival, Une Certain Regard, the Best Actor Award (2006).
Based on Andrea’s play, co-written by her “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” directed by Florin Serban won Silver Bear in Berlin Film Festival (2010) Currently working on directing the film “Don’t Cry We’ll All Meet on The Other Side” (preproduction) and directing and producing the play “Sold Jews” at the Odeon Theater in Bucharest.
Udayan Prasad
“ScripTeast is the programme all the advisors wish they could have attended at the start of their careers. It would have saved all that stumbling around in the dark looking for the key that stimulates the imagination so much more effectively.”
BAFTA nominated, director of “My Son the Fanatic”, “The Yellow Hankerchief” and ”Opa!”, 5th edition ScripTeast creative advisor, UK
Tom Abrams
“ScripTeast’s top-notch team of professional advisors, each year’s talented group of participants, and venues in Poland, Germany and France continue to make it the very best development workshop in the world today.”
ScripTeast Head of Studies, Associate Professor – Screenwriting and Production at School of Cinematic Arts, USC, screenwriter and director, author of the script for the Oscar-nominated film “Shoeshine”, USA
Scott Alexander
“ScripTeast is a fascinating mix of cultures, political ideas, and voices. I learned a lot, and I think the participants learned a lot more. If only they served vodka!”
Golden Globe awarded author of “The People vs. Larry Flynt” and “Ed Wood” with two Oscars, 5th edition ScripTeast creative advisor, USA