Radu Mihaileanu gets six Cesar nominations

Newsroom 25/01/2010 | 11:44

The latest film by Radu Mihaileanu, a Romanian-Jewish director who left the country in 1980 and finally settled in France, has garnered six nods for the prestigious Cesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars. The Concert was nominated for best film, original script, director, music, sound and editing. The production was filmed in Romania, Moscow and Paris with a budget of USD 21 million.

The film is the tragicomic story of a former conductor at the Balshoi Theater in Moscow who was fired 27 years earlier for refusing to denounce the Jewish members of the orchestra and now works in the same place as a janitor. In the movie, he puts together a bogus orchestra from the theater, which maintains it is the official representative for a concert at the Chatelet Theater in Paris.

Despite having left his native land many years ago and seeing his career flourish in France, Mihaileanu says he has always felt emotionally connected with Romania, and feels compelled to return to his homeland repeatedly.