This season, cinema-lovers are invited somewhere in the wild west, in Romania of 1944 when the Second World War is nearing its end to see “Warboy”. The Romanian movie tells the emotionally charged story of a teenager who, in an attempt to save his family’s two horses, embarks on an initiatory journey, crossing the wild landscape of the Apuseni Mountains. With a blend of genres including adventure, war film, children’s film, and western, WARBOY is a movie for the whole family. Director Marian Crisan shared the story behind the film in a discussion with Business Review.

What inspired you to create the film “Warboy,” particularly given that you initially did not plan to make a period drama?

Although it is not a biographical film, WARBOY starts from the memories of my grandfather who was a teenager during the Second World War. At that time he was the servant of a wealthy man and took care of his horses somewhere in the Vrancea Mountains. These memories made me think and I started to build a script about a teenager in those times, a coming of age story. I wanted an epic journey for this character through whose eyes I wanted to decipher the meanings of the end of the war, far from the battlefield. There was the potential of a trip through the mountains, hence the western and road movie elements brought into the script. I am an admirer of the American cinema and it was a pleasure for me to be able to use these genres, revisiting them from the Romanian perspective. I discovered the script while writing it. It’s a fantasy, it’s not something 100 percent realistic or biographical.

In previous articles about the movie, you mention that the film seeks to shed light on aspects of civilian life during the war that were left unsaid. What specific elements of civilian life do you portray, and why do you believe these aspects have been overlooked in previous Romanian films?

First of all, films about WW2 are very rare in the last 30 years in Romania. The history that was thought in school back in the 80’s was full of communist propaganda. We were thought that we turned against the fascist Germany alone and we only learned about those events after 23rd of August, 1944, when Romania became an ally of the USSR. Nothing about the four years when we were Germany’s allies and fought the Russians on the Eastern front. Films were mainly about Romanian soldiers fighting Germans, not too much about the real Romanian people, the famine, the hardships of the families left behind by the peasant soldiers. In WARBOY, the view is different. We see the end of the war from the point of view of a kid struggling to deal with his condition, working in the woods and then trying to save his family’s horses. I documented the period for a long time and talked with my grandfather about many details of everyday life in those times, from the food they ate to how they dressed and talked. For me cinema is also about documenting people and historic times.

What proved to be the most challenging aspect in authentically reconstructing Romania from the 1940s?

The hardest was to find the right locations for the village in the beginning. We didn’t have the budget to rebuild a whole village, so we looked for the remains of old townlets in the mountains to start building the sets. We found the old cottages in Apuseni Mountains, in Garda De Sus where peasants still live in wooden houses during summer when they take the cows and horses for grazing. This tradition persists for centuries, and those wooden houses were the base for our film sets. Also, most of the film is shot in nature, forests, valleys and mountain tops in the Apuseni Natural Park. I wanted to have a kind of a war film setup only in nature, in the wilderness.

Can you share insights into the casting process for “Warboy”? How did you go about selecting actors to bring the characters to life, especially considering the historical context of 1940s Romania?

I searched in various horse-riding clubs across the country. Daniel is from Bacău and our first meeting was in 2020, at that time he was 13 years old. From the first time we met I felt that he could play this part. Daniel has a native instinct, he is very talented, and I think he can easily do cinema. We did a lot of tests with him, both on text and action, riding, movement. I chose him with my heart, I felt that he could play this character and I knew that all his shyness and insecurity could be used for the benefit of his acting and for the film. Another strong point was that Daniel rode very well and he was living from dusk till dawn around the horses, in the stables. That was very important to me.

Reginald Ammons was another discovery. In 2021, when I was still in the casting process, I heard that an American actor, living in Bucharest, was auditioning for an American series that was going to be filmed in Romania. We called him to our auditions, and he proved to be a suitable choice. The role of the American pilot was a perfect fit. He was originally from Texas, he could ride a horse and he was prepared for this physically demanding role. It was a pleasure to work together on his character – Earl, a construction that started from his memories about his grandparents from a small town in Texas, Littlefield, who had fought in the Second World War.

The other actors in the cast come mostly from theaters from the western part of Romania, from Oradea, Cluj, Satu Mare, and also Bucharest. As usual, I worked with many extras and non-professional actors chosen from the area where we filmed. I tried to bring to the screen, new faces, special figures that would give the air of the certain period, the action takes place in a rural area of Romania, in the 40s.

I studied a lot of photos from the era. We worked with the photo archives of the Transilvania Museum in Cluj, where we found many images of peasants from the Apuseni Mountains from the 40s-50s. We even found a photo of a 14-15-year-old boy who was with some men in a logging operation in the mountains in the 40s. That photo was carefully studied by the costume and art department because there were many details in it about how people dressed in those times, about the objects or tools they used, details about how they would work in the forest and even their haircuts or what footwear they would have.

Can you share any memorable moments or stories from the audition process that stood out to you, whether in terms of remarkable performances or unexpected discoveries among the actors?

I like to work with non-professional actors. I think this gives more truth to the whole film. I look for faces, for attitudes, for the sensation they give on screen when testing. I have done a lot of testing before. We had actors coming from all parts of Romania, but mainly from the West because they could speak the Transylvanian dialect I wanted in the film. The universe you create in a film is made from these faces, gestures and the way characters talk, all must feel real.
As a detail, I remember that during the casting process I asked several boys to do one of the scenes barefoot. It wasn’t something compulsory. Among the very few who did the scene barefoot was Daniel.

How did you find the location in the Apuseni Mountains?

We searched a lot to find suitable locations for the film. I was in the Vrancea area, the Fagaras area, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. We knew that in Apuseni there are those abandoned wooden houses in several places, and we ended up hitting the Apuseni Mountains in the summer of 2020 and 2021. When we arrived in the Ghețari area and especially at Poiana Călineasa I felt like I had arrived in the movie. There we found many wooden houses where the peasants stay over the summer with their cows and horses. Those small hamlets and the landscape of the Apuseni Mountains Natural Reserve became the scene for the action in WARBOY. Besides that, I knew the landscapes of Apuseni from my childhood and student days when I made several trips to Stâna de Vale, Boga, Padiș, Arieșeni and, of course, to the Scărișoara Glacier. The Apuseni Mountains are a very cinematic landscape, and it helped the wester feel in the movie.

We filmed for 25 days, most of the time in the Apuseni Mountains Natural Park, in places where access was only possible by foot. There were times when the equipment was taken with 4×4 cars, on forest roads, to places where the access was very difficult. It was also the premise of shootings that led to some spectacular footage, as we have sequences on mountain ridges, through mountain rivers, caves or gorges.

Could you provide more insight into your decision to make a war film in 2022 without focusing on heroic deeds or trenches?

I wanted to make a different kind of war movie, a film about the children and families left behind by the soldiers, who were mainly peasants from all over Romania. I didn’t want to make a film about heroes and their deeds. The tension is built around this kid who hopes his father will come back from the War and who struggles to save his father’s horses. We follow his every moment, every beat of his heart, till the end of the film, in a kind of portrait of a boy during the war.

In this movie, you emphasize the universal validity of a teenager’s story from 1944, regardless of when the war occurs. Can you explain how the film achieves this universality, and what elements of the story do you believe transcend the specific historical context?

I believe the story is universal and that it talks about war anytime and everywhere, because children and animals are maybe the most delicate and sensitive beings affected by war. The story started from those memories of my grandfather that I felt were the center of his life. I felt that the boy that was my grandfather in those times talks about kids everywhere in the world and I created the story to be universal, bringing somehow all the nations and all the conflicts in those forests. The story can be also read like a fairytale, where a young man embarks in a journey of self-discovery facing monsters and all kind of obstacles during the war.

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