From Romania, with (D)Love

Last weekend, we saw the fifth running of the Romanian Film Festival, put on by the American Romanian Cultural Society. A large handful of Romanian films screened in Seattle, with some prominent figures throughout the world visiting Seattle to show off the best of Romanian film.

One film that I was completely taken with is (for now) called D-Love. It’s a lovely story about a couple who comes back from a disappointing vacation to meet a free-spirited vagabond outside the airport (played by the real life “D-Love,” Ditlev Darmakaya) when he asks for a ride “east.” He’s a hippie hitchhiker who ends up staying with the couple for three days and alters the course of their floundering relationship.

I found the movie extremely personal, finding a lot to relate to with the Stefania and Dan characters (played by real life couple Elena Beuca and her husband Dave Rogers). She directs the film, and he’s the screenwriter.

While on the film festival circuit last year, this movie cleaned up with awards, winning awards at ten of eleven film festivals the movie screened at, and it’s in the works to have this great movie play in theaters and be accessible through VOD or streaming in the near future.

While visiting Seattle, I met with the quite de-lovely Elena Beuca for an interview. Here is an edited version of what we talked about:

Let’s talk about D-Love. My understanding is that this is semi-autobiographical, I think it said that at the beginning “Based on a true story.: How did the movie come to be, or how did you decide you wanted to tell your story?

First of all, the name is going to change. The new name is “The Things We Know.” Because it makes it much more about the journey, and about what we know as people or what we thought we know, versus just the person. And that’s something that the distribution company has decided to do, and we’re on board with that.

How did we decide to make the movie? It was a long journey. I’ve done a couple of shorts before, and then I wanted to do my first feature. So I hired a writer to write me a story, and I just didn’t really like anything that he wrote. It didn’t connect with myself. And then one night I was cleaning my computer and I came across a story that I wrote many years before, and it was entitled “D-love.” And it was based on the experience that my husband and I had with the D-love kid, the vagabond, when we met him at the airport in 2011, right after my brother has passed away, and my husband’s parents passed away. And this kid has literally made us see differently. He just connected us with who we are as people, and brought a different genuineness and different … I don’t even know how to say it. Maybe love? A genuine love for life and people.

So when I decided to make the film, I wanted to make sure that I cast someone who can play D-love as authentic as possible. So I actually hired the real guy. He is the real vagabond that we met in 2011. So he plays himself, basically.

I did not know that.

Yeah. So the three main characters basically kind of play a fictionalized version of themselves.

You were telling me that you were more like the Dan character, and your husband is more kind of like you in the film.

Yeah. Well, no. We’re both more like Dan in real life. So. In reality, when we met the kid, it did not take me three days to actually like him. I liked him the moment we met. Indeed, my husband connected with him probably within seconds, maybe took me an hour or so. The moment he got into the car and we took him to the restaurant to give him something to eat, I was just like … this kid is from a different world. I love his simplicity, I love his outlook in life, I love how real he is. Because I think living in Los Angeles, you kind of lose that part of the realness of who you are as a person. You’re too guarded and stuff like that, so he just showed us who we are, really, underneath.

And one thing I was curious about is that, like I said when we were talking when we first met, that this movie hit me because it just felt like it was about my relationship with my girlfriend. And I’m just wondering what it was like directing this, directing and starring in this movie about your life that’s so personal, and that has this emotional connection with the audience?

Hard. And I’ll say hard because I was terrified to play her. Initially we thought we were gonna hire big name actors and it’s gonna be completely different, but then once we decided to cast the real kid, Ditlev, we knew he’s not comfortable with someone that he doesn’t know, and it would be hard to get him to be authentic and real with someone that he just met.

So I was terrified to play her because she’s so different than me, in a way. And she’s so guarded, and on the paper when we read it and we were at the table read, I’m like, she comes across as a hard woman, and I hope that I can pull it off. Because if the audience doesn’t connect with her than we don’t have a film, and I hope that I can show layers to her, because she’s not just hard because she’s hard. She’s just broken. She just has walls.

But once I’d made the commitment I went on full force, but I’ll tell you this: it was extremely difficult. We shot this whole film in 12 days, and there were almost no sleep. There was almost no sleep at all because we had long hours of shooting and then afterwards, I had to watch the dailies to make sure that we got everything that we needed. There was tons of doubt, definitely. Also because this was my first feature, and I’m like … I hope I can do it. I don’t want to let people down, you know? I have the whole team that is relying on me, but thank God. By the grace of God we just kept going and going and we took each day at a time.

I wanted to ask you about showing it to Romanian people because this is the Romanian Film Festival here…

We have only been to 11 festivals last year, and we were beyond lucky that we won 10 out of those. For best feature, or audience award, or Grand Jury, so we got a total of 14 awards. And then it was mostly in the United States, and the only one that was outside was Cayman Islands. So I have never actually shown it to Romania. I’ve only shown it at the Romanian Embassy has organized a screening for us in Hollywood, in Los Angeles. So it was organized for the Romanian people in Los Angeles. That’s what you saw.

That was what I saw that on Twitter. And so what was the reaction with that?

This film made me connect with who I am. I think for so long, living in Los Angeles, I was very disconnected from my Romanian heritage, because most people that I know in Los Angeles are Americans or Italians or Spanish, and I only have two Romanian friends. But this film got me to connect with Romanians. And to screen the film for Romanians, I’ll tell you this, was the biggest joy in the filmmaking process because it reminded me who I am and what my voice is.

And it’s different, of course, because I screened it for so many other people. But to see how they connect as Romanians with it, that to me was just the best. Like, I couldn’t ask for anything more, really.

And then what’s gonna happen after this, and how can people see it after you’ve done taking it to film festivals?

So we’re done with the festivals. We stopped last year with the festivals. Otilia (Baraboi, American Romanian Cultural Society president) was just so kind to invite us here. And because it’s Romanian, I said absolutely, yes. Without a doubt. But now we’re just working with the distribution company and hopefully very soon in the next couple of months, you will see it in the theaters and then on the other platforms.

Is there anything you’re working on now that you can talk about or want to, or anything else while I have the tape recorder running?

I am working on another feature, but I’m also developing a TV series. So I’m excited for both of those projects, and hopefully very soon they will be coming to life. But yeah. That’s about it. I’m excited because I hope this was just the beginning, and I’ve learned so much. Good and bad, and mistakes that I hopefully would not repeat, so I pray that the next one will be 10 times better, and the next one 100 times better. And so on, and so on.