Odessa in Flames event screening in Bonţida | TIFF

Odessa in Flames event screening in Bonţida

14.04.2011 03:00

The big winner of the 1942 Venice International Film Festival, Italian-Romanian co-production Odessa in Flames / Odessa in Fiame (dir. Carmine Gallone) will be featured in the 10th edition of the Transilvania IFF in an event open air screening at the Banffy Castle in Bonţida, on the evening of June 7th.

Recognized as one of the masterpieces of European cinema during WWII, Odessa in Flames , has been thought to have been lost forever until a few years ago. The old 35 mm copy was found in 2005 in Rome, in one of the archives of the Cinecitta studio. Restored and remastered a few years later, it is now ready to meet the Transilvania IFF audience. Written by Nicolae Kiritescu at the initiative of Romanian legend film critic & producer Ion Cantacuzino.

The film, set in the first years of WWII, stars famous Romanian opera singer Maria Cebotari (1910 – 1949), who plays the part of leading role of Maria Teodorescu, who gets stuck in Chisinau during the 1940 Soviet invasion of Bessarabia, then – part of Romania. Her 8 year-old son is taken to a camp in Odessa (today – in Ukraine), and, in order to be able to see him again, she has to earn her living by singing in bars, taverns and theatres. Things change when the Romanian army comes to town and liberates it, the following year.