Afghan War Veteran Drama ‘Pyrrhic’ Takes Top Prize at Transilvania Pitch Stop Awards

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias Romanian filmmaker Cosmin Nicolae’s “Pyrrhic,” a feature debut about an army veteran sent into a downward spiral after returning home from Afghanistan, took home the top prize Friday at the Transilvania Pitch Stop, the co-production forum of the Transilvania Film Festival.

The Chainsaw Europe Post-Production Award comes with €25,000 ($27,400) in post-production services for the winning project. Nicolae’s war drama follows a veteran returning to her hometown on the Black Sea coast, where a harrowing discovery jeopardizes the process of coming to terms with her traumas and with a drifting society.

The film is produced by Velvet Moraru of Bucharest-based Icon Production. “It’s a very character-driven, observational drama.

It’s inspired by a host of characters that I’ve been researching — it’s real people and real experiences,” Nicolae told Variety after the award ceremony. “I’m interested in marginalized characters and liminal spaces, and the way people reflect their surroundings and vice versa.” The film will reflect the experiences of immigrants from Southeast Asia, who make up a large part of the Romanian workforce but “remain invisible” to the broader society, as well as those of veterans returning from combat zones “carrying all sorts of visible and invisible wounds,” said Nicolae. “Researching their experience, many people abroad had no idea that Romania has soldiers in peacekeeper missions abroad, so it was important for us to take these stories and make them a little bit more visible,” he added. “Pyrrhic” was also the winner of the CoCo Award for a Romanian or Moldovan project in development, which includes a five-day residency offered by the Connecting Cottbus Co-Production Market.