The Rest Is Silence
A fact-based work of fiction that inevitably recalls the Taviani Brothers' Good Morning, Babylon (1987), Romanian director Nae Caranfil's historical epic Restul e Tacere travels back to the Bucharest of 1911, where 19-year-old Grigore Ursache (played by Marius Florea Vizante and modeled upon real-life director Grigore Brezeanu) realizes that he'll never be able to achieve success as a stage actor on par with his famous thespian dad.
As an alternative, he decides to kick-start a new career as a filmmaker extraordinaire by mounting the country's first epic drama - a lavish onscreen recreation of Romania's struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Thus commences the young man's arduous and oft-nebulous seriocomic struggle between the requirements of art and the demands of business.
While difficult, Ursache's effort does ultimately produce the film that he desires: the real-life Romanian masterpiece Independenta Romaniei (The War for Independence, 1912). His goal is simple: to convince a dubious Romanian public that cinema, as an art form, can exist on par with theater.
Throughout the film, Caranfil intercuts sequences from Brezeanu's original motion picture, which underwent restoration just prior to the production of Restul e Tacere.