MILK TEETH
Feature Film Selection 2026
•
1h 43m
DINTI DE LAPTE
Romania, France, Denmark, Greece, Bulgaria
Fiction
Romania, 1989. The twilight of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. In a small, isolated town, Maria, a ten-year-old girl, is the last person to witness her sister disappearing in front of her eyes. Torn apart by the loss, she is trying to make sense of a new, terrifying reality. Can she summon up the courage to grow up?
Written & directed by: Mihai Mincan
Produced by: Ioana Lascar, Radu Stancu, Cyriac Auriol, Monica Hellström, Konstantinos Vasilaros, Pavlina Angelova
Cinematography: George Chiper-Lillemark
Editing: Dragos Apetri
Production Design: Ana Maria Tecu
Costume Design: Dana Paparuz
Make-Up & Hair: Dimitra Fafaliou, Sotiris Paterakis
Original Score: Marius Leftarache
Sound: Nicolas Becker, Cyril Holtz, Frederic Dabo, Benjamin Laurent
Visual Effects: Alexander Schepelern, Lea Benjovitz, David Stroe
Casting: Florentina Bratfanof
Cast: Emma Ioana Mogos (Maria Lucaciu), Marina Palii (Cezaria Lucaciu), Igor Babiac (Petre Lucaciu), Istvan Teglas (Valentin Prisecaru), Victor Ioan Rogobete (Adrian), Lara Maria ALexandra Comanescu (Alina), Maia Victoria Boboc (Simona), Albert Ciuta (Nasta), Karina Ziana Gherasim (Andreea)
Statement of the director:
The first image of MILK TEETH came to me in 2019: a young girl listening in total silence, with her right ear pressed against a cement wall. It was a dream, one of the many I started having after reading military records of the Romanian communist police from 1989, about the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl from a small town. I wanted to make a film about a kind of muteness, about the inability to articulate, to describe in words an inner universe that is in constant danger of bursting into flames. Over the years, I twisted and changed this idea several times, somehow trying to find the film's own “voice”. It became a coming-of-age story about the aftermath of a tragedy. A film about a young girl who tries to make sense of a confusing and cruel world that suddenly unfolds before her eyes. Caught between two dimensions – reality and fantasy, political oppression and the rise of the so-called “new world” at the beginning of 1990 – this little girl represents the “lost generation of children”, the same generation I belong to. The children who believed in freedom, only to discover that their voices will not be heard by anyone. This is how MILK TEETH became what it is now: a film that chooses not to speak directly about a child struck by muteness, but about someone who gathers words in their mind, waiting for the right moment to shout out those words to the entire world.
Production:
deFilm Production
https://www.defilm.ro/
World Sales:
Cercamon Sales
https://www.cercamon.biz/contact
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