The people in Izbuc, a village in the Romanian Carpathian mountains (Transylvania), think that their fellow villager Gratian Florea is a werewolf. According to an old custom, when a child is born, the midwifes call upon the spirits, to make the child hard working, beautiful, loveable or wise. It is said that when Gratian was born, the umbilical cord broke only after the midwife called forth the werewolf. This crucial moment was to influence his whole life.
Direction
Ciulei's patient observation lets strangeness breathe without exploitation.
Production
Carpathian cinematography that makes poverty look mythic.
Director
Thomas Ciulei
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Romanian 'strigoi' and werewolf folklore persists in rural Transylvania, where Christian and pre-Christian beliefs intermingle in daily ritual.
Director Thomas Ciulei is Romanian-German; his outsider-insider gaze mirrors how Gratian exists between village acceptance and exclusion.
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