ROMEO & JULIUS

-A film by Sabine Hviid.

Year: 2009. Duration: 25 min.

A youth group called “The Theatre Factory” are preparing for their final annual production – an updated version of Shakespeare’s ROMEO & JULIET. In this adaptation two boys, themselves struggling with their own questions of love alongside their roles on stage, perform the central. Reality soon starts to interfere with the play as rehearsals begin. What was intended as an abstraction in the film; the famous play about an impossible love, suddenly becomes very real, as feelings begin to grow in them. The Director Sabine Hviid combines her documentation of the production with intimate interviews made within personal spaces that contrast with the scope of Shakespeare’s play and aim at showing the character’s internal life.

ROMEO & JULIUS is a film about daring to love. As in ROMEO & JULIET, love is the key to life (and death). If we do not dare to love – we do not dare to live. But why does one resist love? Maybe because of family background or other personal experience? The film is about those confusing feelings, that obstruct our logic and make our hearts miss a beat, but also feelings that make us grateful to be alive. It’s a film about the beauty and folly of youth – before one’s fears and inhibitions start to dictate your life path.

Praise for the film:

“Who do you love? That is the real to be or not to be question. And Romeo & Julius is that rare film that asks all the right questions and even provides a few daring answers. A sensitive and thoughtful work of art that gently dares to question the perception of ourselves and in doing so pushes our search for identity in yet unexplored territories that would certainly have pleased Sir William Shakespeare.”  – Giona A Nazzaro, director of GenderDocuFilmFest, Rome