Professor-student film collaboration broadcasts on PBS and streams nationwide

“Come Find Me,” an award-winning documentary produced by Rowan University film Professor Diana Nicolae and students in the Radio, TV & Film program, aired on Maryland Public Television/PBS March 18 and has begun streaming throughout the United States and Canada on PBS.org and through the PBS app.

The film follows the journey of Nori Vito, who as a child was adopted from Romania, grew up in the United States and as a Rowan student set off to find her biological family. 

Since production ended, the film won awards in festivals throughout Europe and North America and is now available to U.S. audiences.

Nicolae said the film came about almost by happenstance starting with a 2019 lesson in her Documentary Techniques course. 

“I was showing clips from the Romanian documentary ‘Our School,’ which is about the education of the Roma minority, when I heard from the back of the class – ‘I was adopted from Romania.’”

Calling out was Vito, who afterward asked Nicolae if she thought her life story might make a good topic for her own documentary.

Nicolae, herself a native Romanian, said she told Nori that “every story is unique and the way you’ll tell it makes all the difference.”

“I did not know at that time that I would be more involved with this film than the typical student project,” she said.

Beginning in 2019, Nori set out with a few fellow students to search for her biological family. She and classmate Randy Leopardi spent Spring Break filming in Romania and Greece, often coordinating with Nicolae via video chat and uploading dailies of their film shoots.

They returned home with nearly 80 hours of documentary footage, much of it in a language the student crew didn’t speak, and had just a few weeks to craft a viable film for the annual RowanDOCS movie premiere event through the Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts.

“It was at this point that I realized I’d have to become a full member of the crew to help the film achieve its potential,” said Nicolae, an award-winning filmmaker in her own right.

In addition to producing and co-directing the film, Nicolae and her co-editor worked through the extensive footage to shape it into a story. A subsequent production trip to Romania and Greece helped capture missing pieces of the story and, following months more work, the film was ready for distribution. 

Since then, “Come Find Me” has found a strong market at film festivals in Europe and the U.S. including at Visions du Reel in Switzerland, the Southeastern European Film Festival in Los Angeles, and the Astra Film Festival, Romania’s largest documentary film festival and one of Europe’s most important. 

Following its initial broadcast on Maryland Public Television/PBS, “Come Find Me,” has begun a two-year streaming run on PBS.org for viewers in the U.S. and Canada and Nicolae said she couldn’t be more thrilled. 

“I always have faith that students can do the impossible when they are committed to a project,” she said.

The RowanDOCs program, which Nicolae leads, has a long record of award-winning filmmaking including wins in more than 100 local, regional and national competitions. The Broadcast Education Association recently ranked it #6 among college programs nationwide.

Another RowanDOCs film premiering this week is the Spring 2022 student project, “Broken Bottles: A South Jersey Legacy,” which will screen at the Garden State Film Festival March 25^th in Asbury Park.

View more RowanDOCS projects website (https://cineluci.com/rowandocs/).