Bucharest FM awarded at UK International Radio Drama Festival

Bucharest FM Heruvim production by Răzvan Ursuleanu and Mihnea Chelaru won the second prize in the short form category at the UK International Radio Drama Festival 2019, held at Canterbury on 18-22 March 2019.

Fifth edition of UK Radio Drama Festival was held under the slogan ”The Greatest Admiration in the Universal World”. This year, organizers decided that besides Jury Awards for Best Full-Length entry and Best Short Form, audience can vote online its favorite production. Another premier at this edition was scenarios transposed in digital format.

This year, entries have been received from Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Spain, Slovenia, Serbia, UK, USA.

Festival had five days of live listening to radio/audio plays drawn from 18 different countries and presented in 15 different languages. Creations were spectacular and extremely diverse in form and language. Jury (10 members) had a difficult task in selecting the winners. Debate sessions that followed audition of productions had many personal notes and gave rise to heated discussions, but in the end the jury managed to establish the hierarchy.

Bucharest FM participated with two short plays, Heruvim and Only Sound We Had.

Heruvim - written by Bucharest FM Broadcast Editor Răzvan Ursuleanu and directed by Mihnea Chelaru, Director of National Radio Theater - was cataloged as a "sound jewel" that observes the violent game of adults in their chase after winning and affirmation, and, at the opposite end, the innocence of an incomplete child, forced to evolve in a decadent world.

Only Sound We Had, an idea of Răzvan Ursuleanu, is a radio experiment about the sound of colors on the gray walls of the common Communist spaces, which reverberate differently in each of us. The play, directed by Eugen Vrabie, Bucharest FM Broadcast Editor and Răzvan Ursuleanu, ranked among the first six radio productions in the short form category.

Winners of this year’s UK International Radio Drama Festival 2019, short form category:

• First Prize - One of Our Exercise Books Missing, Darrick Wood School, UK;

• Second Prize - Heruvim, Bucharest FM, Romania;

• Third Prize - What Kind Of Coffee Do You Like? - Czech Radio, Czech Republic.

Source:RRA.Translated by Miruna Matei