It seems Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong are keen to head to Communist Romania. Well, not the real one, as they’re a bit late for that, but they will star in a film set in the Eastern Bloc country, called Closer To The Moon.
The rather unusual sounding movie seems part heist flick, part social drama and part serious farce, with a side order of just how extreme and strange government’s could be during the Communist era. According to Deadline, ‘Strong plays Max Rosenthal, a former head of a criminal investigation unit for the Bucharest police force who is implicated in a bank robbery in which he and three others perpetrated the crime while assuring the crowds they were filming a movie. They are tried and sentenced to death because they are Jews, but only after the communist government forces them to re-enact their crime in a propaganda film. Farmiga plays Max’s former lover and mother of his child, who returns from studying in Moscow as the drama unfolds.’
Romanian-born director Nae Caranfil (The Rest Is Silence) will helm, with shooting taking place in Bucharest this autumn.