'Miracle' by Assistant Film Professor Bogdan Apetri '06 Wins at Tromsø International Film Festival
Miracle, written, directed, produced, and edited by Assistant Professor and Film Program alumnus Bogdan George Apetri '06, won the Don Quixote Prize at the 2022 Tromsø International Film Festival.
The 32nd annual Tromsø International Film Festival took place from January 17 to 23, 2022. Founded by Tromsø Kino in 1991, the festival, which has become a flagship of the Norwegian film industry, shows challenging, quality films from around the world for a local, national, and international audience.
Miracle is the second film in a planned trilogy set in Apetri's hometown of Piatra Neamt near Romania’s border with Ukraine. The film follows a young nun who sneaks out of her monastery to attend an urgent matter, only to never make it back. A police detective's investigation into her fate uncovers clues and revelations that lead not only to the truth, but a miracle as well.
The festival’s Don Quixote Prize is awarded by FICC (Federation Internationale des Cine-Clubs). Founded in 1947 during the Cannes Film Festival, FICC/IFFS is an international umbrella organization for film societies and non-profit cinemas. The Italian film director Gianni Amelio is the honorary president of the FICC. The 2022 award jury included film critics João Paulo Macedo, Peter Stuart Robinson, and Holger Twele.
“The FICC jury awards its Don Quixote Prize to a film that plays with the audience’s expectations in an impressive, sometimes even oppressive way,” the jury said in its official statement. “What is really happening and what is merely in the minds of the viewers? Could it even be supernatural? This is a chambre-play-like road movie about guilt and revenge, in which the landscape and the social environment nevertheless play an important role, and a young woman becomes the victim of a still male-dominated society.”
Miracle previously screened at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival as part of the festival’s In the Horizons category, as well as the Hamburg Film Festival, the Vancouver Film Festival, and the Zurich Film Festival. Apetri was awarded the prestigious Critics’ Prize from CinEast for the film, in addition to winning the Grand Prix at the 37th edition of the Warsaw Film Festival in October 2021.
A former lawyer in Romania, Bogdan George Apetri's student films screened and won awards at prominent short film festivals across the world. He was a National Finalist at the Student Academy Awards in 2006. In 2010, he directed and wrote the feature film Periferic (Outbound). Funded in part by Romania's National Center for Cinema, the film was shown at some of the best festivals across the world and won numerous international awards including the FIPRESCI Award twice. Bogdan co-produced 3 Backyards by School of the Arts Film Professor Eric Mendelsohn, a feature film that won the Best Directing Award at Sundance in 2010 and was selected for New Directors/New Films in New York. He co-produced Advantageous by Jennifer Phang (Jury Prize at Sundance in 2015), The Bravest, the Boldest by Moon Molson (Sundance 2014), The Mend by John Magary, Nobody’s Watching by Julia Solomonoff, Love Hunter by Nemanja, Brane Bala, Dog by Florin Serban and Blaze by Ethan Hawke (Sundance, 2018).