Adina Pintilie is a Romanian filmmaker and visual artist. Her previous credits include “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and screened at over 50 international fests, and the short “Diary #2.”

“Touch Me Not” will premiere at the 2018 Berlinale on February 22.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

AP: “Touch Me Not” is a personal exploration of intimacy and research that I undertook together with several characters. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, the film follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tomas, and Christian.

Craving intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms, and taboos — to cut the cord, and finally be free.

“Touch Me Not” looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways and at how to love one another without losing ourselves.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

AP: When I was 20, I thought I knew everything about love, about how a healthy intimate relationship should be, and how desire functions. Today, after 20 years of trials and tribulations, all of my views about intimacy — which were so clear — seem to have lost their definition, and grown more complex and unsettlingly contradictory.

As a reflection of this personal journey, “Touch Me Not” touches on these questions of human longing and (in)ability to touch or be touched, to make contact with each other.

Intimacy plays a central role in human experience, and it has its roots in the initial physical, emotional, and psychological bond between the mother and a newborn. This initial contact shapes infants’ brains, profoundly influencing their self-esteem, expectations of others, and — later — their adult intimate bonds.

Beyond its crucial role in identity formation, healthy intimacy at an individual level also has major implications at the community level, allowing for a psychosocial network of human beings connected through solid emotional attachments. Dysfunctional intimacy within the family nucleus fosters a prolific ground for further conflict, abuse, discrimination, and prejudice at a larger social and political scale.

That’s a very short summary of why I feel intimacy is an area of high relevance, which we need to work on, and explore in more depth.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

AP: I hope the film can open up a space for self-reflection and transformation, to challenge the viewers’ perspective on intimacy, to create a dialogue, to nurture tolerance, inclusion, and freedom of expression, and to give an empowering voice to human beings affected by prejudice.

I hope the viewer may be challenged to reevaluate their experience and ideas about human intimate relationships, with a particular focus on de-objectification and the personalization of human exchange.

I also want to stimulate the audience’s curiosity about the Other — someone else who may be different — and increase our empathic ability to place ourselves inside that Other’s skin.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

AP: It has been a long journey of nearly seven years making the film. The unique nature of the project has often been a challenge in presenting a film that in some ways falls outside the classical rules. Exploring a topic usually surrounded by taboos — in a way that defies any conventions and labels — often made the financing process difficult.

After its beautiful international start in 2011, with the Arte Award in Rotterdam, then the Main Production Award in TorinoFilmlab, the MEDIA Development grant and Cannes Cinéfondation Atelier selection in 2012, the project was blocked for two years by the fact that the Romanian Film Fund (RFF) didn’t support it initially. The jury they appointed at the time found the project too risky, due to both its taboo theme, and because it didn’t obey the classical rules of narrative fiction.

Luckily, our public protest to the Ministry of Culture, the support letters written by well known professionals like Michel Reilhac, who was the Head of ARTE France Cinema at the time, and filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, and the press scandal around it managed to unblock the situation.

At the following round for the Romanian Fund, which took place only in 2013, we got the grant awarded for Best Debut. Thus the financing finally took off in 2013, followed by the German MDM financing, the Bulgarian Film Fund, the Strasbourg Regional Fund, and then Eurimages, followed in the last stage by the Czech Film Fund.

So the project was complex and challenging even before we began researching and shooting for the next four years, and then started a long editing process with over 250 hours of rushes.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

AP: “Touch Me Not” is a co-production involving five countries: Romania, Germany, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and France. National and regional funds from nearly all of these countries were involved, as well as European support from Eurimages and a MEDIA Development grant.

The film was also developed and supported at several co-production workshops and labs, including Rotterdam’s CineMart, the TorinoFilmlab, Cannes’ Cinéfondation Atelier, and the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam. We also won the Work in Progress Award at Cinelink Sarajevo and presented the project at Venice’s Gap-Financing Market.

W&H: What does it mean for you to have your film play at the Berlinale?

AP: I feel first of all deeply touched by the trust Berlinale is showing in our work. “Touch Me Not” has been a seven years long labor of love — a really tough and challenging journey that required a lot of strength, commitment, courage, and raw honesty from all of the people involved.

I am so profoundly grateful to our incredibly brave team, who took huge risks in making the film, and Berlinale’s acknowledgment and empowering support means a lot to all of us. It’s a beautiful platform for the film, and for the quest for inner freedom that is at its heart.