Grigore addresses in "Blue Moon" the psychological effects of a violent environment

San Sebastián, Sep 20 (EFE) .- Romanian actress Alina Grigore has made her feature film debut with "Blue Moon", a film very close to the reality of some communities in her country in which she follows the psychological evolution of a young woman who dreams of escaping from a violent and macho environment.

Grigore competes with this film for the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival. In this Monday's presentation, she was accompanied, among others, by the actors Ioana Chitu, Mircea Postelnicu and Vlad Ivanov, the latter member of the official jury in the 2014 Zinemaldia edition.

Irina (Chitu) is the protagonist of the film, a 22-year-old girl, the youngest of a dysfunctional family in which, in the absence of the father and with a sick mother, uncles and cousins ​​exercise a guardianship which they use to to oppose the girl's greatest wish: to go to study in Bucharest.

Aggression and chaos converge in family relationships, for which Grigore, also the author of the script, has been inspired by the reality of the town where he grew up, where he spoke with several young women. What one of them told him attracted him and, although it was not enough to mount the story, he did use it as an "emotional line".

The actress and filmmaker, born in 1984, has commented that of the girls who left her community in her time, she was the only one who did so to pursue higher education. "The situation remains the same, the girls are forced to go outside and there is a manipulation by which they are forced to marry, go abroad to work and have children," he laments.

Grigore painstakingly developed the script with the actors until each came to understand the "purpose" of their character, a "conscientious" way of working that the three actors have corroborated today.

They rehearsed a lot and both Ioana Chitu and Mircea Postelnicu helped prepare the protagonists in a rural setting just like the one in the film. "There I understood the rhythm of people, living there gives you a certain way of moving and doing things," said the actor.

Two directors with whom he has worked as an interpreter have had "an enormous influence" in the filmmaker Grigore, one is Cristi Puiu and the other Adrian Sitaru, who had already told him at some point that he should try to direct and who pushed him to carry on. his "obsession" to follow "the main character's psychological journey."

And movements such as the Nouvelle Vague and directors such as the German Werner Herzog, whose way of working has "obsessed" him, have also been decisive in his filmmaking training.

"And I like what is happening at the moment, with filmmakers who are bravely combining very realistic stories with a very different aesthetic expression", highlighted the actress, screenwriter and director, who has given the film "Lobster" as an example. from the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos.