![]() These are anxious times in Moldova, where few doubt that the small nation’s fate hangs in the balance of the outcome in Ukraine. If I were to start the film nowadays, I wouldn’t even touch the subject. The Transnistria War, after all, ended in July 1992, while the barbarity of the Ukraine conflict continues to play out in real time. “I thought, ‘Is it alright to show it how we made it, in these circumstances?’” he says. The brutal scale of the attack on Moldova’s eastern neighbor gave the director pause. ![]() His and Vasea’s Quixotic quest to identify the charred remains they discovered - and to give the body a proper burial - mirrors Dima’s gradual recognition of his own duty to preserve and honor the memory of Moldova’s war dead.īorș shot “Carbon” before the start of the Ukraine war and was in post-production when Russia launched its full-scale invasion last February. “Carbon” turns on a scheme by Dima to enlist in the war effort, a decision made not out of some patriotic impulse, but so the young layabout can claim one of the new apartments promised to veterans by an ambitious local politico. Nor does it allow them to fully come to terms with their past. And that doesn’t allow the Moldovan people to build their own future.”ĭirector Ion Borş (left) with stars Dumitru Roman and Adriana Bîtca on the set of “Carbon.” Courtesy of Ion Bors “It’s like you’re expecting the second coming of Christ. “It’s all kind of bullshit,” he continues. Others think the Americans are going to save them. Some people think that Russia is going to save them. “This is why the population in Moldova is so divided. “For the past two centuries, we’ve been through multiple occupations - by Russia, by Romania. That sinking realization, says Borș, is still a core conviction for many of his countrymen. It was a turbulent period of post-Cold War realignment, with many in the Soviet sphere grappling with questions of identity and self-determination in the wake of their newfound nationhood.įrom the beginning, Moldovans seemed painfully aware of their place in the new geopolitical landscape, a fate the war veteran, Vasea (Ion Vântu), underscores when he reminds his young sidekick, Dima (Dumitru Roman), that the country is largely at the mercy of decisions being made in Moscow and Washington, D.C. ![]() While most wars are drawn up by politicians and generals far removed from the front lines, Borş reminds us, there is a human cost that inevitably must be paid by those ordinary souls fighting on the field of battle.īorș was born in May 1990, little more than a year before Moldova declared its independence and two years before its statehood was officially recognized after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not many tears are shed in “Carbon,” which world premiered last year in the New Directors strand at the San Sebastian Film Festival, but the movie’s absurd premise - which sees a young village slacker and his Afghan War veteran buddy sent on a wild-goose chase to determine the identity of a burnt corpse - nevertheless has a real human drama buried beneath the surface. “They just treat everything with a laugh.” “The Moldovan people, in the 30 years since their independence, they’ve gone through so much pain and so many political conflicts that at this point they don’t even pity themselves,” says Borş. It’s perhaps a natural reaction to an event whose tragic dimensions - more than 1,000 combatants and civilians are thought to have lost their lives - have largely diminished with the passage of time. ![]() As he spoke with other Moldovans about their memories of the independence years, however, he found their stories likewise laced with irony and self-deprecating humor, upending his plan to make a “classic drama” about that period - a heart-render “with a lot of crying, like ‘Titanic,’” as he describes it. “I thought my father was the exception,” admits the director, speaking to Variety at the Transilvania Film Festival, where his debut film, “Carbon,” a tragicomedy set against the backdrop of that decades-old dust-up, plays in competition. ![]()
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