SYNOPSIS
American Professor Robert Traum takes a sabbatical and turns his back on a present without surprise, to live an adventure from the past. Back in the Old World, he researches the origins of his father and uncle, the famous Traum brothers: Rudolf, a famous novelist, and Samuel – once a notorious gangster in Chicago. While traveling through Transylvania and Bucovina (former Austro Hungarian Empire provinces) Robert meets Tanya, a Government archivist. Together they find Sami, the last surviving family friend, a cinema projectionist who was chased out of his old movie theatre by a greedy local politician. While Robert helps Sami win his theatre, Sami gives Robert his identity back.
A “fish out of water” story of travel through the Carpathians, English speaking 90 min. comedy and some Romanian dialogue.
Cast: Marcel Iures (Mission Impossible, The Peacemaker, Pirates of the Carribean: At Worlds End, Amen, Goal!) Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, City of Ghosts, Hotel Room Trilogy), Mihaela Sarbu (Aferim!)
PHOTO GALLERY
THE DIRECTOR ABOUT THE FILM
The Phantom Father is the portrait in impressionistic touches of the chimera of a man frightened by the approaching twilight of life, although still haunted by the ghosts of his childhood.
The confusion of the age crisis experienced by Robert Traum "the dreamer" contaminates the entire narrative matrix of the film which is based on a huge misunderstanding: age, geographical, cultural, linguistic.
The film flows in a tango rhythm, constantly swinging between the new world and the old continent, between childhood and adulthood, between fairy tale and thriller, between fiction and reality, between love and threat, between search and flight from responsibility, between banal and supernatural, between memory and hope.
The quid-pro-quo is the fundamental compositional process, the characters are confused not only about their own identity, but also about the others, the obese and violent mayor is taken at night as the seraphic Tanya, the American professor as a dangerous CIA agent, the old projectionist they mingle with Ukrainian mobsters who give up their serious role to become fast food sellers, and the temporary visitor, taken as a serious suitor, is slapped on the head without knowing the slightest thing that something serious has happened to him.
The Phantom Father is not a genre film, nor a specific genre of film, but a road movie fusion, topped with bitter cherry jam, where the final destination is the road itself as dessert. Recommended for fans of full-bodied, bonhomie and tender fiction, to consume generously.