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‘God Will Not Help’
Courtesy of Kinorama
Romanian Producer Ada Solomon Lights Up Locarno with 3 Bold Films—And Her Fiery Take on Why Cinema’s the Ultimate Debate Weapon!
Added on August 16, 2025 inMovie News Cards
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So here’s the deal—Romanian provocateur Radu Jude drops his latest cinematic beast, Dracula, premiering at the 78th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Now, if you thought one film was enough, think again—producer Ada Solomon, the magic behind microFILM and longtime collaborator of Jude, is juggling not one, not two, but three competition entries this year. Besides Dracula, there’s the hauntingly quiet God Will Not Help, about a Chilean woman invading an insular Croatian mountain community, and the raucous, humor-laced Sorella di Clausura, a clash of worlds fueled by love, ambition, and sex products biz in Bucharest. With the cosmos swirling in Scorpio—master of intensity and transformation—it feels oddly fitting that Solomon’s projects grapple with themes like identity, power shifts, and the dizzying passage from communism to capitalism. Makes you wonder: in a world spinning so fast, how do storytellers keep us grounded while provoking us to confront uncomfortable truths? Solomon isn’t just producing films; she’s weaving dialogue in a fractured universe where fake idols rise and real stories fight to be heard. Intrigued? Dive deeper and catch the full scoop here: LEARN MORE.
Dracula, the new film from Romanian provocateur Radu Jadu (Kontinental ’25, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World), world premiered in the competition program of the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Among the co-producer credits, you find the name of Romanian producer Ada Solomon (Toni Erdmann, Aferim!), known for her work through her company microFILM and long-time collaboration with Jude.
But Solomon has had a much busier Locarno than most. She has the same co-producer credit on fellow Locarno competition title God Will Not Help, directed by Hana Jušić, about a Chilean woman who comes into a firmly structured and isolated mountain community of Croatian shepherds in the early 20th century, claiming to be the widow of their émigré brother.
Plus, Solomon is a producer on Sorella di Clausura from director Ivana Mladenović, her third competition movie at the Swiss festival this year. “Stela fell in love with a Balkan musician after seeing him on TV. Determined to meet him, she accepts help from Vera, a glam starlet rumored to be his mistress,” reads its synopsis. “Their worlds collide when Vera promises to rescue Stela from her poverty-stricken life by taking her to Bucharest, where she runs a sex products business.”
Solomon talked to THR about her busy Locarno, her focus on storytellers and their motivation, fake idols, and how cinema can cause the dialogue that the world may now need more than ever.
“I have to say that, not because I have three films in the international competition, but the selection of Locarno this year is absolutely spectacular,” Solomon says. “And it’s really an honor to have the films presented there.”
Her three movies in the Locarno competition are distinct. “They do have some things in common, in a way, but they are very, very different,” Solomon tells THR. “There is the punkness of Ivana. Obviously, Radu has this irreverent way of presenting a cinematic story. And Hana’s God Will Not Help Us is yet a thing.”
What are common themes? “God Will Not Help is about a bonding of two very different women, which is similar to what’s going on in Sorella, even though they are completely different proposals,” explains the producer. “Sorella is very noisy, it’s crowded, while God Will Not Help is a very peaceful, silent, contemplative, slow-paced film. But they are touching on some similar things.”
People have also said that Sorella has some of the Dracula qualities. “When they speak about these two films, they mention this boldness of the approach, even though Sorella is much more narrative,” Solomon says. “In the end, it’s an anti-romantic melodrama with a lot of humor.”
Locarno was the first major festival where Solomon had a film in competition, as a minority producer on Federico Bondi’s Black Sea in 2008. The movie won the Ecumenical Jury Prize and a Silver Leopard best actress honor for Ilaria Occhini.
Now, Solomon is getting closer to the mark of 100 films.
‘God Will Not Help’
Courtesy of Kinorama
Her focus is clear. “It’s always about the storyteller,” Solomon tells THR. “I’m working with auteurs who can tell a visual story. I’m looking for their motivation. That’s always my first question: Why this story? Why this project? Because we embark on a journey that can take five, six, seven years. Okay, with Radu, it’s much less, but that’s a different thing. He’s quite particular in many, many respects, but in general, it’s a long journey. So, motivation is key. And then the other essential thing is that we share the same values. Because if we don’t share the same values, and I don’t have something to learn out of this experience, I’m not interested, because it’s a process and an exchange.”
For Solomon, cinema is also about the exchange with the audience. “For me, it’s very important for cinema to have something to say, to raise a question through emotions. That’s art for me in general, and that’s somehow also my civic contribution,” she explains. “I think I can contribute, in a way, to a better understanding of the world we are living in. And I think we need this kind of dialogue more than ever, because we are living in a troubled world. The challenges are so complex because the fake, or not even the fake, but the one-sided perspectives are dominating our informational universe. And there is so little space for dialogue that I think that only emotions can now make us go deeper. And it’s not about money for me. It’s about content, the quality of content. And of course, it needs to make some money, but this is not the primary focus.”
The challenges of moving from Communist to capitalist systems play a key role in quite a few of the movies that Solomon has worked on. “This transition and this transformation and the question of where we are going now is a theme,” she says. I mean, it’s 35 years-plus after the revolution already, from the fall of the [Iron Curtain], and we do have a little bit of distance. The ’90s and even the beginning of the 2000s were pretty chaotic, and we didn’t have time to analyze and to contemplate what was going on. It was all turmoil, events, changes, discoveries, and so on.”
Things have changed. “Now we are a little bit settled, but we are again at a crucial point of crisis all around the world, and we look back and say, ‘Fuck, we had such a good life, and we were complaining all the time. But those were the good times!’ We are now going towards hell with very fast steps. And maybe there is something to learn from what is behind us. So what the hell are we doing?”
‘Sorella di Clausura’
Courtesy of microFilm/Dunav 84
What microFILM is doing next is focusing on the Sarajevo Film Festival, which kicked off on Friday. It also features Sorella and God in its feature competition, plus Alișveriș from director Vasile Todinca as part of its short film competition.
That short is one key focus for Solomon. “It’s very dear and very important to me, because it’s done mainly by the new generation in the company, my partner Diana Caravia, who’s in her early 30s, and she’s growing up. We are a collective of producers, and we are perfectly equal in the company. We are bringing projects in together. It’s Diana and Carla Fotea together with me.”
Each of the partners has a slightly different focus. “Diana is much more interested in things that are a bit more experimental, a bit more genre,” Solomon explains. “While Carla is very deep into storytelling and the way a story is delivered, but also very involved in documentaries. So, it’s a mix, and that makes it a pleasure.”
Solomon and microFILM has more in the works. “Now I’m very focused on the new film from Alexandru Solomon, Small Expectations,” she tells THR. “It’s a project that will go backstage of the Romanian elections of last year. And I think it’s a very important project or exploration of what was going on. And it not only affects Romania, but it’s also about what is going on with the rise of extremism, and why voters turn to extremism and nationalism. Why are they turning towards virtual leaders that are built on TikTok?”
Sorella touches on that theme as well. “It has become even more timely since we started that project six years ago, because it speaks a lot about these fake idols building their public image on different kinds of screens,” says Ada Solomon.
Alexandru Solomon, her husband, also has another project, called The Archive of the Archives, a film about the National Archives of Romania and the people working there. “It’s a film about memory preservation,” explains Ada Solomon. “How do we pick what we keep and what we throw out? It talks about this small community of experts in the National Archives in Romania, but it also speaks more broadly about sustainability, about memory, about heritage, about how we are writing history.”
‘Dracula’
Courtesy of SagaFilm, Nabis Filmgroup, PTD, Samsa, MicroFilm
In September, shooting is set to start on another microFILM project, the new feature from Alina Șerban, I Met Her. “She is a fantastic Roma director, contemporary artist, and activist who will deliver a very personal story translated into fiction,” Solomon says. “It’s the story of a survivor, not a victim, seen from the Roma perspective, which will be a premiere, seeing the life of a young Roma girl on screen.”
It is a film that fits into Solomon’s focus of putting a spotlight on stories that have not been told and on challenging audiences. “It’s a story without victimizing, without pointing fingers,” she says, “but built to empower people, outcasts or marginalized people, to take their destiny into their hands and overcome the challenges.”
Before Solomon goes back to her busy schedule, she mentions one more project that fits her focus, Eugen Jebeleanu’s The Price of Gold. “It’s about what lies behind the people who are in competitive ballroom dancing,” the producer tells THR. “It will be a film in 10 chapters, each of the chapter being one of the typical dance styles, like one is tango and so on and so forth. And it’s a story of transition, and of him discovering, discovering his identity as an LGBT person. It’s a personal story, but it’s heavily fictionalized.”
The film also has another angle. “It also depicts how in this discipline, the trophy for once is not the woman, it’s the man,” Solomon explains. “It’s about how the families of the girls are competing to get the best partner, because there are few men and a lot of young ladies.”
The project fits Solomon’s auteur focus but also allows not only the film’s audience, but also herself to explore something new. “For me, what’s most interesting is trying to do something that I haven’t done before and from a different perspective,” Solomon concludes. “And this is such a project.”
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