Blue Banks

Andreea Borțun (Romania) took part in LIM | Less is More in 2019 for the development of her feature film “Blue Banks” (Malul vânăt). The film is shot in 2023.

Synopsis

Lavinia, a single mother, is trying to make a better living for her and her son, in a poor Romanian village. On her own terms.She’s impulsive, she miscalculates, she doesn’t know very well how to love. When she gets a job in Marseille, she has to leave her son behind. While she’s away, he grows into a man.

Intentions

The general feeling governing Lavinia’s life is one of profound dissatisfaction. The relationship between what she thinks she deserves and what she actually does in order to deserve that, is of importance to me.

I feel a sense of absurdity in our lives created by this tension between our capacities and our projections of (cheated) expectations. The life Lavinia expects and feels entitled to, doesn’t take into account her position in the world and the conditionings of that world. She’s in an in- between place where ambitions are high and unrealistic. She is surrounded by elements which create false images of what she could have: media, migration, community values. Lavinia lives in a world in which she feels she is constantly wronged, robbed of her rights, of what she should be entitled to.

For her, happiness, the feeling of accomplishment, of justice are always somewhere else. Where she lives is never right or enough.