Private Project

Solitary

Years after release from solitary confinement, a man still runs from his past as part of a 400-mile, self-sufficient, arctic marathon. Hungry, exhausted and cold, he is ready to abandon the race when hallucinations in the ice take him back to a moment in his cell when he contemplated suicide. Past and present fight to reconcile a poetic inner struggle that is the essence of the human condition.

  • Tudor Munteanu
    Director
  • Tudor Munteanu
    Writer
  • Amy Tofte
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Runtime:
    22 minutes 10 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 6, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    7,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Romania
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada, United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Red
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Tudor Munteanu

Tudor Munteanu is an award-winning actor and filmmaker. In 2008, he immigrated to the U.S. from Romania to pursue acting and has appeared in a variety of productions (The Nun, The Disaster Artist, Hawaii Five-O, Criminal Minds) His debut short film, Other Side (writer, co-director) earned the 2016 IFS Film Festival award for Best Independent Short. He has produced festival-awarded live action and documentary shorts. He is currently in post-production on his first feature as a producer and in development on another feature based on a Nicholl Fellowship-winning script. He is a member of SAG AFTRA and has served on the Screen Actors Guild Awards Nominating Committee.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

SOLITARY explores loneliness as a fundamental human condition. While we think of ourselves as collective creatures, the reality is that we live most of our lives in our own heads. I’ve completed five marathons and, while accompanied by tens of thousands of people in the race alongside me, each marathon was ultimately a lonely, inner experience. An incoherent, monotonous, inhale-exhale dialogue with the self. From the outside, I was just another guy running. But inside a turmoil was occurring...

In 2019, I volunteered as support crew on a 400-mile, ultra-marathon at the Arctic Circle. Athletes of various backgrounds and nationalities compete in this grueling, self-sufficient race every year. They pull survival gear in a sled across a barren white landscape all the way to the Arctic Ocean. Every one of the athletes I met had something in their past or present they were seeking to overcome. Something to prove. From cancer survivors, to ex-convicts, to overlooked library clerks—they not only fight against the freezing cold, they fight against their own demons. The result of this struggle is the emergence of an altered reality, a stream of consciousness. Solitary attempts to capture this state of mind as a meditation on the Sisyphean journey we often find ourselves in.