Written and directed by Daniela Stemate, follows the story of Ileana, who is chased by nightmares at night and a stalker by day. Journeying through the realm of the dreaming and the everyday streets of life finding the allies to guide her back to self in order to face the demons of her past and confront the villains in her present. Starring: Francesca Amura, Leo Anand, Agata Maria Frankowaska and Richard Trist.
Choosing to explore such a poignant, heavy topic with animation, is an interesting way to approach it with a more accessible perspective. Sânziana takes an old-school approach, Daniela Stemate employs a style that’s surprisingly wholesome, using fairy tales to explore trauma. While the animation brings that traditional quality, the live-action scenes then bring the tone down a bit to reflect the harshness and danger of the situation. It’s an unusual blend, and it works but it does feel as though it struggles to entirely take the weight of the topic.
Using that fairy tale tone takes things to an inherently structured place, it doesn’t feel as organic, or flow as naturally. It also leans towards a younger tone, which isn’t always perfectly matched for such a hard-hitting topic. However, it does well to move between those two worlds of dreaming and awake, capturing how the two begin to infect one another. The animation is nicely done, that classic style matches the dialogue really well. The live action scenes are similarly shot well, especially with a lot of scenes draped in darkness. Stemate manages to not lose the detail, and those settings do help to add a bit more of an edge to try and balance out the tone.
Although, the score is one element which clashes with that, it feels like it’s overwhelming the scenes rather than complementing them. Regardless, at the heart of Sânziana there is a clear, thoughtful, meaningful message for survivors of harassment, stalking and assault, to resist the pull of guilt and shame. To stop blaming themselves, to focus on processing the emotions and moving forward. Francesca Amura strongly portrays that journey, she does well to capture the fear and frustration, the desire to move forward fighting against the pull of the lingering pain that the trauma has left her with.
Sânziana takes a fresh perspective on exploring trauma, moving through haunted dreams to a fractured reality and trying to find a place of peace. There’s a familiarity to its style of animation, and while it does work well, it can feel like it’s adding a touch too much youth to the conversation. That unfortunately restricts how hard this story can hit, when it does have a very relevant, poignant tale to tell. It can also lean on metaphor a bit too strongly, but it has very thoughtful intentions and deals with the subject very sensitively, and with a lot of care and empathy.
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