Anatomy of a Debut. Andrei Epure on “Don’t Let Me Die”
Last year, under similarly scorching heat, I spoke with Andrei Epure about his first feature film, Don’t Let Me Die, which was then in the editing phase. He was still processing the post-shooting period and had quite a few questions about how the film would eventually turn out – at least creatively. Our conversation was part of a series dedicated to debut directors, alongside Sarra Tsorakidis and Andreea Borțun, later published in the 4th print edition of Films in Frame. The goal was to understand what the beginning of a filmmaker’s journey feels like: what kind of pressure a debut entails, and what lessons might come out of the experience.
A year later, Don’t Let Me Die was selected for the Cineasti del Presente competition at the Locarno Film Festival – an important yet quiet form of validation after years of work on a project you believed in to the very end. Because as fertile as the creative stage may be, the process of bringing a film into the world – between missed funding opportunities and rejections – can be just as overwhelming.
For Ana Gheorghe, the film’s co-writer and producer, the past year has also brought this kind of feedback. “I wasn’t joking when I posted on Facebook that we had some tough years with Don’t Let Me Die, and that we often heard it was ‘too dark, too radical, too weird’ or ‘too philosophical,’” she says. “These reactions came from funding committees, but especially from sales agents, who became my nightmare. And yet, we were glad to receive them, even if that meant they rejected us. Because we never set out to make a film that would please others – we wanted to make exactly the film we ourselves would love to see. I loved that we shot it at the seaside in winter (something I had long dreamed of), that it features two dogs in important supporting roles, that it includes my favourite music (doom jazz), that Elina plays a ghost, and that it’s full of cats. What more could you ask for?”
In the end, maybe that’s all that really matters: that the film remains exactly the one you wanted to make. Here’s how Andrei Epure got there.
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I went out with Andrei Epure for a beer before, but never at 10 a.m. We met in a pub in Bucharest on a hot summer morning. The street beside us was under construction, so on top of the heat, there was a burning smell in the air, making it even harder to breathe. A cold beer seemed like the only thing that could save us.
I met Andrei a few years ago, when he was in post-production with his short film Intercom 15. Something in that film stayed with me – its ordinary characters and dialogue, gradually turning into a strange, heavy atmosphere, reminiscent of a Carver short story. Now we’re repeating history. Andrei is once again in post-production, this time for his debut feature, Don’t Let Me Die, which continues the story of the short that was selected for Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique in 2021.
He didn’t set out to further develop the short into a feature – it just happened that way. After several attempts at other feature scripts that seemed to lead nowhere, Andrei realised he wasn’t done with this particular story.
In Intercom 15, a few residents of an apartment block discover the dead body of a neighbour in front of their building. The story revolves around this incident and how each of them responds to it. In Don’t Let Me Die, Maria, the main character (played by Cosmina Stratan), tries to understand who the deceased woman was. “It’s a sort of post-mortem reconstruction of a character in absence – and of what remains after someone dies, someone who was close, but only in a physical sense, someone she passed by in the stairwell but never knew by name,” Andrei says. “A mix of fear and fascination – a nearly morbid fascination Maria has for who Izabela Ivan really was.”
When he talks, Andrei seems to immerse you in an idea. He often circles around it, looking for nuance, which he never delivers superficially – but often elliptically. As if he’s trying to keep up with his own thoughts, which are too slippery or abstract to be captured in precise sentences. When we start discussing the making of the film – from writing to the shoot – we end up diving into topics like literature, his relationship with the Romanian New Wave (NCR), and the revelation of reading Lucretius’ poetry.
But let’s take things one at a time.
Andrei studied screenwriting after two years of studying literature. If film school taught him how to shape the tone and form of a film, literature gave him the freedom to imagine and explore other ways of seeing a story – something he tries to do in cinema as well, capturing the metaphorical layer of the text in visual terms. He briefly considered becoming an actor, but quickly gave up the idea. He also loved editing, which he learned and sees as “another form of writing.” Directing came naturally – as a convergence of all the things he was interested in.
Andrei was a film student during a time when landmark titles of the Romanian New Wave drew young people to cinema – and he was one of them. “It was a kind of foundation,” he says, something his generation feels deeply indebted to. These were films that birthed other films, and they influenced him – at least stylistically. He prefers long takes, one of the New Wave’s visual signatures, because of their hypnotic effect, which invites viewers to explore points of interest beyond the obvious. He also feels this kind of gaze – “from a certain distance” – best expresses his personality.
To develop the screenplay, Andrei participated in a residency in Paris organised by the Cannes Film Festival. He spent almost six months living in a central house alongside five other filmmakers. The experience, he says, turned out to be mostly meditative. He read books he otherwise might have struggled to finish (Being and Time by Martin Heidegger). He and his housemates would drink beers in the kitchen and discuss screenplays, which reminded him of dorm life. But what stayed with him most was the alienation he felt in a deeply European and touristy city – a feeling that made him reflect on solitude, including that of his own characters.
How do you breathe life into a film that speaks about death? It’s a question that preoccupied Andrei Epure throughout the entire process – from scriptwriting and shooting to editing. He set out to make a film with many endings. While writing, he avoided concluding scenes too neatly; during filming, he allowed room for “tails” – lingering moments – and in editing, he played with transitions, letting sequences bleed into each other without clear breaks. “That’s what gives the film life, when you can read between the lines,” he says.
“I love that feeling you get when you think you’ve grasped something or are close to understanding it – and then an image comes in that throws you off. You’re left with confusion, but it’s a pleasant kind of confusion. One that doesn’t frustrate you, one you begin to accept, and eventually stop looking for answers,” Andrei explains. When things get too abstract, Ana is there to save him. Ana Gheorghe is his partner, the film’s producer and co-writer. “Ana has a more coherent, holistic view than I do. She brings clarity without turning it into a lecture or thesis,” he says.
This kind of confusion is something Andrei seeks to carry into the film through a blend of genres – a combination of horror and comedy, which recurs in all of his work. Eugène Ionesco puts it best, he says, paraphrasing: comedy only really works when it’s also a little terrifying. It’s not that he’s drawn to these kinds of stories per se – it’s just how he observes the world: snippets of tram conversations, the 5 o’clock news – people seem to take a strange pleasure in hearing about others’ suffering. It’s something Lucretius also captures in a poem that Andrei finds highly cinematic. He pulls out his phone and reads:
“Tis sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation. Not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.”
Part of the film was shot at the seaside in February (the rest in Bucharest). On the first day, Andrei felt something eerie in the strong winter sunlight. It seemed like a post-apocalyptic landscape – the people gone, the animals returned. It felt like a good beginning. The next day brought a kind of mental shock – the overwhelm of too many things at once. But slowly, things fell into place, the crew clicked, and they all fell into the same rhythm for the next 24 days.
Two things were essential for Andrei: that the actors stuck to the script and that everything was thoroughly prepared – so that, once on set, they could simply go with the flow. Still, unexpected moments arise – the kind that can make you feel ashamed just for thinking them. Like when they were filming in a cemetery and, right then, a real funeral began. The team couldn’t help but think about their allotted time. Or when scenes fall apart or don’t turn out as scripted – like a pivotal moment with the dog Anishka, who didn’t behave as expected, but whose real-life reaction turned out to be more beautiful than imagined.
If Andrei feared anything, it was the creeping sense of weariness that can set in during filming – a kind of latent fatigue that makes you go on autopilot. What helped him through it was the crew’s stamina, Cosmina’s energy, the late arrival of Romanian-American actress Elina Löwensohn (known for Sombre, Schindler’s List, Simple Men), who brought a renewed sense of excitement, and Ana’s all-in presence, making sure everything stayed on track. (Don’t Let Me Die is produced by Saga Film, co-produced with France and Bulgaria, and currently has an estimated budget of 1 million euros.)
“I wanted to make a film about our relationship with death – in all its bureaucratic, terrifying, and sometimes absurdly comic aspects. I wanted to create a kind of visual obituary – something tangible – that would archive the passage through life of someone who left few traces behind,” he confesses.
He’s still processing things after the shoot, but Andrei thinks his next feature might have fewer characters and fewer locations. Just one example: the film’s opening is made up of three or four shots filmed in different places, at night – and prepping a simple scene such as a walk down a hallway, which you shoot in 20 minutes, can take up to four hours.
“It would make my life a little easier,” Andrei says, smiling. “I want to stay in one place longer, to explore what it can offer, to think more about performance, to let myself be surprised – and, in general, to spend more time with the team.”
Don’t Let Me Die (dir. Andrei Epure) will be released in Romanian cinemas this fall.
Journalist. She worked for ten years at Adevărul and DoR as a reporter and for a while in communication. At Films in Frame, she coordinates the whole team with Laure, while also editing some of the articles about the film industry, trying to always find interesting angles to tell a story.
Journalist. She worked for ten years at Adevărul and DoR as a reporter and for a while in communication. At Films in Frame, she coordinates the whole team with Laure, while also editing some of the articles about the film industry, trying to always find interesting angles to tell a story.