SEEfest 2021 Interviews: SO, WHAT’S FREEDOM?’s Andrei Zinca talks about focusing on visuals and giving symbolic characters nuance

Andrei Zinca’s SO WHAT’S FREEDOM?, which recently screened at the 2021 South East European Film Festival, is a story of a group of people at first denying the reality of their country systematically turning them into outcasts whose lives are forfeit, to that same group surviving in spite of almost literally everything because ultimately that is what living organisms default to – and let’s face it, when everything is stripped away – that is what we are. This story of love, survival and thirst for freedom is inspired by real events, which took place in 1951, in a country (Romania) which had been recently subjugated by a totalitarian regime, and is told from a present day perspective in terms of our vast awareness of autocratic regimes and how they can sway one group of people to lose their humanity once they believe they have power over another group.

In the interview, we talk about Zinca’s approach to the visuals of the film, the color palette, the script as seen by a director of photography, and the visual distinction separating the “universes” created within the film. We also talk about the nuance achieved in the characters – weakness in “villains,” conflicted intentions and behavior from “heroic” characters, etc., and how they were set up to be symbolic of entire groups during that time.