Biography
Born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, director Radu Mihaileanu trained at the Institute for Advanced Cinematic Studies in Paris. His first film, "Trahir," was released in 1993, and dealt with the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceau?escu. He followed this with the highly acclaimed "Train of Life," which told of an Eastern European village idiot who dreams of saving himself and his Jewish neighbors from the concentration camps by constructing a phoney deportation by train. (Mild controversy was stirred by the fact that Italian actor Roberto Begnini turned down the lead role in Mihaileanu's film soon before making his own tragicomic Holocaust farce, "Life is Beautiful.") Mihaileanu followed this multiple award-winner with 2005's "Live and Become," which dealt with the repatriation of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. 2009's "The Concert" again dealt with aspects of Jewish history, through the story of a former conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra who is fired for hiring Jewish musicians at the time of an anti-Semitic purge, and later seeks a chance to rebuild his career. Mihaileanu's 2011 film, "The Source," the story of a village sex strike inspired by Aristophanes' "Lysistrata," won a place in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Mihaileanu has also made films for French television, and in 1987 published a volume of poetry.
