A River’s Gaze – Malul Vânăt

Andreea Borțun (Romania) took part in LIM | Less is More in 2019 for the development of her feature film “Blue Banks” named now “A River’s Gaze” (Malul vânăt). The film was released in July 2026.

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. Dani, her 13 years old son however needs his mother more than ever during this period of his life, at the threshold between childhood and adolescence. In the course of the four seasons, Dani and Lavinia’s relationship is put to the test.

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.