Martin Scorsese Casts Ilinca Manolache and Gabriel Spahiu in ‘What Happens at Night’

Last year, during a conversation with TCM’s Dave Karger, Martin Scorsese name-checked Romanian director Radu Jude as a contemporary filmmaker he admires.

There's this guy named Radu Jude… He’s something else. Especially “Aferim!,” which he shot in black and white, and another one that I’m sure isn’t to everyone’s taste, “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.” That one is shocking—it takes political content, cinema, morality, immorality, throws it all on screen, then shatters it into a thousand pieces, and suddenly, you see the world differently.

It seems as though Scorsese’s fandom is very real, to the point where it’s translated into his casting of two Jude regulars for his next film.

Ilinca Manolache (“Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World”) and Gabriel Spahiu (“Kontinental ‘25” and “Dracula”) have joined Scorsese’s “What Happens at Night,” which already stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Mads Mikkelsen, and Patricia Clarkson.

Having just returned from the Prague set of Scorsese’s film, Spahiu told Romanian outlet Urban, speaking having just worked with DiCaprio: “He is very professional and managed to relax me.” Referring to his collaboration with Scorsese, the actor highlighted the atmosphere on set: “People do their job, they are very serious and focused, they only talk about the film.”

Throughout his career, Spahiu has worked with major directors of the Romanian New Wave, such as Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, and Radu Jude, becoming one of the defining presences of the realist and ironic style in that country’s contemporary cinema.

As for Manolache, she absolutely stole the show in “Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World.” In fact, she’s been in Jude’s last four films, the others being “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” “Dracula,” and “Kontinental ‘25.”

“What Happens at Night” is being described as a “dream-like story” involving a married American couple who travel to a small, snowy European town to adopt a baby. While staying in a nearly deserted hotel filled with enigmatic figures—a flamboyant singer, a corrupt businessman, and a magnetic faith healer—they confront a strange world that challenges both their marriage and their sense of reality.

No release date just yet, and it is currently expected to be targeting a Cannes 2027 debut. The Apple-produced project is based on Peter Cameron’s novel of the same name, with the screenplay adapted by Patrick Marber (“Closer”).