{"id":504770,"date":"2026-06-17T19:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T19:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504770\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T19:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T19:09:11","slug":"we-wont-get-old-together-explores-midlife-meltdown-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504770\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We Won’t Get Old Together’ Explores Midlife Meltdown During Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRomanian filmmaker Marius Olteanu<\/a> (\u201cMonsters.\u201d) is readying his sophomore feature, \u201cWe Won\u2019t Get Old Together,\u201d a pandemic-set drama about a man struggling to rebuild his life from the ground up when everything around him comes crashing down. Olteanu is presenting the film this week in the Works in Progress program of the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe Won\u2019t Get Old Together\u201d tells the story of Radu, an unemployed architect who finds himself at a crossroads amid the stultifying stillness and uncertainty of Bucharest during the pandemic. Caught between two relationships and facing a potentially life-threatening diagnosis, the 40-year-old must make choices that he\u2019s been putting off for far too long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to\u00a0Variety\u00a0in Transilvania, Olteanu described the film as \u201ca slo-mo journey towards an unavoidable future\u201d that is \u201cscary yet intense, provoking yet filled with a constant need to connect and understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI also wanted this to be a journey where dreams, feelings, images and words \u2014 lots of words and ideas \u2014 slowly blur into a riddle about life itself,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we connect and when do we part ways with the ones who, at some point, were fragments of the core definition of our life?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the center of the film is Radu, a struggling architect described by Olteanu as \u201ca human museum of broken dreams\u201d who has been putting off a long-planned move to Lisbon, where he\u2019ll be reunited with his long-term partner, Gabi. In the interim, he finds comfort with a younger lover in Bucharest, even as his career is stalled and the future grows increasingly uncertain. The situation is complicated when Radu suddenly finds himself confronting a potentially serious illness but is too scared to face the test results that could determine his fate.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Olteanu, the character of Radu taps into many of the fears he himself has dealt with on the cusp of middle age. \u201cForty is an interesting place for a man. It\u2019s that point where you have a life and a history behind you, and at the same time, you realize that what\u2019s following might not be as interesting and as intense as what you\u2019ve experienced,\u201d he says. \u201c[Radu] is at a point where nothing is working, and he\u2019s wondering what he\u2019s going to do with the rest of his life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he began writing the script in 2022, \u201cI was speaking from a place that I was at, too,\u201d the director adds. \u201cYou can postpone things, but not forever. At some point, you need to make a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe Won\u2019t Get Old Together\u201d is Olteanu\u2019s first feature since 2019\u2019s \u201cMonsters.\u201d premiered in the Berlin Film Festival\u2019s Forum strand, where it won the Tagesspiegel Audience Award. In a glowing review,\u00a0Variety\u2019s Jessica Kiang praised<\/a> the \u201cremarkable debut,\u201d describing the\u00a0\u201cpowerful, minutely observed three-part study of a loving marriage threatened by socially taboo and mutually painful revelations\u201d as \u201cwise, compassionate, surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOlteanu is again confronting social taboos with his latest \u2014 this time, around homosexuality, which the director said many Romanians are willing to tolerate \u201cas long as it\u2019s kept between the walls of your apartment.\u201d That belief \u2014 along with the conceit of pandemic lockdowns \u2014 provides a narrative framework for the film, which is largely set inside three apartments in Bucharest.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThree apartments, three closed spaces, three lives, one thread that connects them \u2014 Radu\u2019s presence, the way he captures, reimagines, confronts and finally abandons reality,\u201d Olteanu said. \u201cThis film is a journey through compromise and unfulfilled dreams, through fear and cowardice, and above all, a story about the need to feel safe and loved in a world that seems to be falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe Won\u2019t Get Old Together\u201d is written and directed by Olteanu and produced by Oana Giurgiu, of Bucharest-based Point Film. It\u2019s co-produced by\u00a0Martine Vidalenc of French production outfit Midralgar Films and boasts a star-studded roster of below-the-line talent,\u00a0with sound design by\u00a0Alexandru Dragomir (\u201c12:08 East of Bucharest,\u201d \u201cPolice Adjective\u201d), sound mixing by\u00a0Bruno Ehlinger (\u201cUncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,\u201d \u201cCemetery of Splendor\u201d), color grading by\u00a0Andu Radu (\u201cFjord,\u201d \u201cThe President\u2019s Cake\u201d)\u00a0and\u00a0VFX by Thierry Delobel of France\u2019s Reepost (\u201cBacurau\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Transilvania Intl. Film Festival runs June 12 \u2013 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romanian filmmaker Marius Olteanu (\u201cMonsters.\u201d) is readying his sophomore feature, \u201cWe Won\u2019t Get Old Together,\u201d a pandemic-set drama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,215722,270,214284],"class_list":["post-504770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marius-olteanu","tag-movies","tag-transilvania-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}