Sebastian Stan may still have one foot in the superhero industrial complex of “Avengers: Doomsday” and “The Batman: Part II,” but the actor is increasingly building the other side of his career around international auteurs. After working with Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu on the Palme d’Or-winning “Fjord,” Stan now says he wants to focus his attention on Europe.
“My sights are set on Europe now,” Stan told French outlet Le Journal du Dimanche. “To be honest, I’d love to speak French so that I could work there.”
Stan already has two specific French filmmakers in mind: Olivier Assayas (“Personal Shopper,” “Clouds of Sils Maria”) and François Ozon (“Swimming Pool,” “The Crime Is Mine”). “And me with Olivier Assayas and François Ozon!” Stan said after his “Fjord” co-star Renate Reinsve named Céline Sciamma as one of her dream collaborators. Stan also singled out Éric Rohmer’s “Tales Of The Four Seasons” as a favorite.
This hardly sounds like a passing curiosity. Stan has spent the last few years deliberately building a filmmaker-driven career outside Marvel, earning an Oscar nomination for playing Donald Trump in Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” and winning the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his performance in American filmmaker Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man.”
That path has now brought him closer to his Romanian roots. Mungiu’s “Fjord,” co-starring Reinsve, casts Stan as a devout Romanian immigrant living in Norway whose family comes under investigation after the parents are accused of abusing their children (read our review). The drama won Mungiu his second Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, nearly two decades after “4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days” earned him his first.
Stan has another Romanian auteur waiting in the wings. Radu Jude (“Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World,” “Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn”) is developing “Frankenstein In Romania,” which would reportedly feature Stan as both Victor Frankenstein and his creation. Jude has described the project as combining Mary Shelley’s monster with the history of a secret CIA prison in Romania.
As The Playlist previously reported, Stan also lined up “Let The Evil Go West” with Danish director Christian Tafdrup (“Speak No Evil”). The psychological horror film would reunite him with Lily James, although scheduling has complicated the long-gestating project.
He is also attached to Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s “Burning Rainbow Farm,” a true-crime drama about Michigan marijuana advocates Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm and their deadly 2001 confrontation with the FBI.
Stan continues balancing auteur projects with “Avengers: Doomsday” and “The Batman: Part II,” but the direction is clear: Mungiu, Jude, Tafdrup, and Kurzel could soon be followed by Assayas or Ozon. Stan has apparently decided to spend his blockbuster capital on some genuinely adventurous filmmaking.
