Behind Cristina Flutur’s Cannes winning role: As an actor, you're afraid every time, there's no magic formula

Romania-Insider.com sat down with Cristina Flutur, the Cannes winning actress for her role in Behind the Hills, who believes everything should be done with love, because it is not worth doing things in any other way. “It’s a bit weird to say in a few words what has happened in a few years. I have recently met an ex-colleague from Cluj who now lives in Paris and whom I didn't see at all in the last thirteen years. It was so strange to talk about this time gone by. Millions of things happen to you and quite often a lot is happening on the inside, even if sometimes on the outside it doesn’t seem to be that much.” This is how Cristina Flutur, the actress who received the Prix d'interprétation feminine at Cannes for her role in Beyond the Hills, sums up recent years. And this text is just an attempt to synthesize in a few sentences the million things that take place within a person. As we are walking side by side to a small café in Bucharest, on a chilly autumn day, I can’t help but thinking about Alina, the powerful, tragic character interpreted by Cristina, and feeling, for a very short moment, that I’m actually walking next to Alina. I shake off the confusion and quickly readjust to the real Cristina, as we start talking about Rosia Montana protests and other reality checks. In the film, directed by Cristian Mungiu and inspired by real facts, Alina is a girl raised in an orphanage who, after working in Germany for some time, comes to the monastery where her strongest bond, her childhood friend, Voichita, has found her peace as a nun. The shock felt by Alina when she understands that Voichita no longer loves her, transforms into physical and psychological suffering and after a long chain of indifference, misunderstanding and ignorance, Alina is put through an exorcism. “For me Alina is a very different person from who I am, or from what I have awakened within me so far. We are much bigger than what we seem to be; it's only that we are using just some aspects,” the actress confesses. She goes on: “However, in certain situations, we can bring to light very different things from within us, things we weren’t even aware of and Alina seems to have awakened certain features which were still latent in me. I was a bit afraid of it but I have chosen to jump into this story because I like jumping off, because I trusted Cristian and because I loved Alina.” Cristina’s voice is both soft and firm while she’s talking about the way she connected to her character. She seems to be immersing in the stories she’s telling and her concentration is so vivid that she only takes very few sips from the white tea she has ordered. Concentration is a must when you have to move from one character to another, as Cristina does. She remembers how the theater director Silviu Purcarete once told the actors that it was obvious that they were thinking about the jam jar at home instead of being there. They had to get out of their kitchens and be present. When acting comes down to waking up in your bed, drinking your coffee, getting on the movie set and then suddenly getting into another identity, another being, one may wonder how this happens. “This is what actors generally do, but it’s still a mystery to me how it unfolds,” Cristina says laughing. “For every new project I have the feeling that I don’t know anything and I have to start from scratch. There is no certainty, no magic formula,” she says “After the Cannes award, everybody was asking how I am doing this and the truth is that I don’t know how it’s actually happening. You’re afraid every time, but I think this vulnerability is part of the whole process. I feel like an instrument somehow, a platform for something higher and when you get to connect to it, there is something running through you and you just have to let it run. It’s like a domino. At some point everything falls into its place.” What I discovered most powerful about Cristina is a certain unalterable serenity. Her blue eyes give a few glimpses into her inner world, which seems steady enough that no Cannes award or ego boost can destabilize her. “There are many influences around us, so many that sometimes it’s difficult to be close to you and really know what you want. Maybe it comes with age, but around 30 I started asking myself more and more what I really want, not what it is expected from me, not what I was raised to do, but what I really want. There are moments when it’s only you with you, and you only listen to your heart and to God.” Cristina doesn’t like chatting about her current projects. “I like to keep the mystery on a project and talk about it only when it’s finalized. It feels like I’m helping it, feeding it.” But while seated in this smoky café, about two autumns away from the casting for the Beyond the Hills role, she gives a few hints about her future. “After the Cannes award, the agencies started calling. I now have an agent in Paris and one in Berlin, but things are clear enough that the road is a little bit more difficult for an actor from the Eastern World. But things are happening and it’s good that they are taking place,” Cristina says with smiling eyes.