Original title: Magicianul
Directed by: Bogdan Muresanu
Country: Romania, Croatia, France
Running time: 24’31”
Genre: Animation
Subgenre & tags: Drama, Love, Police, Thriller, Suspense, Black noir, European, Mediterranean, Romance, Historic, Seasons Awards, Social, City, Architectural

Synopsis

Sulina, 1910. It is the inauguration of the first electric power station in this Romanian port city. In the jubilation of a modern and cosmopolitan crowd, Ilarion, a prestidigitator from another time, tries to play his last card.

Director’s Statement

“I wanted to revive a bygone world and the technique of animation allowed me to recreate, from stills, the settings in which the action of the movie takes place, but I also wanted to get to the essence of the story. And here I think animation was a medium that suited my intention: not to illustrate the glory of a bygone world, through the fate of a once exuberant and cosmopolitan port, now reduced to the dimensions of a forgotten small town, but to represent the substance of the story I wrote many years ago,” says Bogdan Mureșanu.
“Film, especially animated film, which is supposed to be a total visual invention, has to produce an image that, at best, then hangs on the walls of those ‘dark corridors’ in the viewer’s mind.”, adds the director.