• It is the first movie in the `Love` trilogy. Why a trilogy on love, what is the connection between the movies and what inspired you to choose this theme?

This is what I wanted to narrate right now. These years. This is what concerns me. I think in fact this concerned me all the time, but I was too teenager to admit it. Now I am growing up…

The link between the movies is thematic and formal. All three talk about different kinds of love, all three have two characters (almost), all three can be placed almost anywhere in the XXth century. And in all three the landscape in which all happens is generated by the characters and the relationship, it is a projection of the characters Mountainous, rough, rigid in Love 1. Dog, humid, corrugated, chilly and decomposing in Love 2. America, arid and coarse in the third – Love 3. Adventure. In addition, as we advance from Love 1. Dog to Love 3, the couple gets younger. The couple in the first part is around 30 – 40 years old, the one in the second is almost 30 years old, and the one in the last part is a teenager couple.

Otherwise, they can be seen independently, there is no plot link between them. To remember the fact that the third one is barely an idea.

• You wrote the script, you directed, you produced and edited this movie. How personal is this movie for you and what kind of challenges did you have from the initial idea of the movie up until the last editing retouch? 

It is very personal, as the other one in the series, as the others I did before, If I want to whistle, I whistle and BOX. It is me in all the characters, all the time, so I can say that it cannot be more personal than this. Of course, I’m not a forester during the holidays, nor a fighter in the boxing ring during my spare time. I’m talking about an intimate fiber of the characters. The masculine and the feminine ones. I think that if the movies I make are not personal, it doesn’t make sense making them. At this moment, making an art movie is so complicated that if they are not personal, for me, it isn’t worth the bother. 

Challenges… I don’t know. There are challenges all the time. Starting with how much I can say about me, how much I can afford this and finishing with financial, logistic and human challenges. You see, the movie is a collective effort. Very collective. And then the supreme challenge is to make the others believe in what you tell them. Of course there are some who come for the money, of course there are some who come for the glory, but I’m not talking about them. I talk about the ones that are like me and that mainly they love making movies. They love filming, not finishing the filming day or the work on the movie. To do, not to finish. These are the people you have to convince to be at your side. This is a challenge, as they are the ones enriching your vision. And in this project I had some of these people and that rejoiced me. 

Otherwise… I don’t know. It was the most strenuous project, physically speaking. It is not simple to film on the top of the mountain with equipment that weights hundreds of kilos and with no fabulous logistic support. 

• Why did you choose Cosmina Stratan and Valeriu Andriuță and which were the collaborations with the people in the movie’s crew without which the movie wouldn’t have been the same? 

I did a casting and they were the best. They became dear to me when I saws we were made from similar materials. And now, two years after finishing the filming, we work together on a project that is dear to me, the Acting School.

I was saying earlier that it is important to find yourself with people like these. The ones like me, who live to make movies and to tell stories. It is important to work with this kind of people, to live with them, to fight with them, to rejoice when something comes up great and to not lie to each other. What I say seems very `cool`, but it’s not that simple.

• The movie is a thriller with a love story at its core. How did you work to build this identity for the movie?

For me as a director that was in fact the challenge. We have romance movies in Romanian cinema, some better, some dreadful, but they exist. Nevertheless, we don’t have thrillers. There were a couple of attempts, but refused by the idea or without any skill. I like this genre and I wanted to try it as an icing. This is what hits you first in Love 1. Dog, the thriller and underneath it, step by step, you practically discover the love story. And beyond the story you discover the people. In fact this is about these two people, about their fears, about their instincts, about their force. In a love story. That sounds and looks like a thriller.