Will Jones
Alexandru Tomescu
On 4 July 2023, at the Palatul Cotroceni in Bucharest, President Klaus Iohannis signed into law the package of education reforms developed under România Educată, the seven-year national consultation he had initiated in 2016. The Presidential Administration’s official record describes the project as “the largest and longest-running public consultation on public policy in education to date,” with over 10,000 people directly involved across regional debates, online questionnaires, and OECD-developed policy briefs. The reforms became the basis of Romania’s 2020-2024 Governance Program and were written into the country’s National Defense Strategy as a state commitment.
Five years before that signing ceremony, the Presidential Administration uploaded a launch film for the project to its official YouTube channel. The film, which was rebroadcast across Romanian outlets including Știrile Pro TV, opens with a wide shot of a classroom and a voiceover about the future of the country. Among the people on camera in a principal role is a young actor named Alexandru Tomescu.
Tomescu lives in Los Angeles now. The PSA was filmed in Romania, before he moved to train at New York Film Academy.
A Different Kind of First Credit
Government PSAs do not usually function as career-launching credits for actors. They tend to be short-cycle commercial work, paid through agency rosters, with limited downstream value. The România Educată launch film is an exception, for two reasons.
The first is the project it served. According to the Presidential Administration’s own records, România Educată ran in three phases between 2016 and 2021. Phase one alone produced eight regional debates, an online questionnaire with over 8,000 respondents, and 35 consultation events organised by third parties. Phase two assembled seven themed working groups with more than 140 members, addressing teaching careers, equity in education, education management, vocational training, higher education, early childhood education, and pupil assessment. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development produced four policy briefs in cooperation with the Presidential Administration. The project’s findings were operationalised in Romania’s Governance Program for 2020-2024 and embedded in the National Defense Strategy approved by the Romanian Parliament under Decision no. 22/2020.
The second is the credit itself. Tomescu played a principal role in the launch film, the public-facing artefact of the consultation, broadcast on national television and hosted on the Presidential Administration’s official channels.
“What stood out to me was the purpose behind it,” Tomescu says of the project. “It was part of a national conversation about education and the future, so it already carried a sense of responsibility. I approached it with respect for that message, finding truth in the moment to keep it honest.”
Caracal
Tomescu grew up in Caracal, in Olt County, southern Romania. The town has an old Roman name, a population under thirty thousand, and no domestic film industry to speak of. Romanian regional cities of that size are not typical pipelines into Bucharest casting rooms in the way Cluj or Iași can be.
“I grew up in Caracal, a small town in southern Romania, where my interest in acting began at a young age,” he says. “I was always drawn to stories and to the way film can communicate something that goes beyond language.“
His path out ran through productions that gave him enough working footing to be cast in the România Educată film. After the project, he relocated to Los Angeles for the New York Film Academy programme.
“That journey brought me to Los Angeles, where I trained at New York Film Academy,” he says. “It was an experience that challenged me creatively and introduced me to people from many different cultures and artistic backgrounds.“
Sacrebleu
The second credit on the file is in a different language and a different production culture. Sacrebleu: Chapter One is a French short directed by Clément Oberto that premiered at the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025. The conference, co-hosted by France and Costa Rica, drew heads of state for a week of negotiations that produced the Nice Ocean Action Plan.
Tomescu plays Adult Enzo, the grown version of a character introduced as a child wrapped in plastic, in a film Oberto describes on his portfolio as “EPISODIC FEATURE FILM” structured in nine interconnected chapters. Chapter One has accumulated sixteen festival awards on its run, according to the director’s own count, and is scored by Ilya Lagutenko of the Russian band Mumiy Troll, one of Eastern Europe’s most recognised musicians of the last three decades.
The project gives Tomescu a long-arc international credit unusual at his career stage. Oberto’s site lists the project as in its “final funding phase” for the remaining eight chapters. Returning cast on a feature-length project of that structure accrue working biographies that single-credit actors do not.
What an LA Career Looks Like at This Stage
Tomescu’s credits in Los Angeles cover film, television, and commercial productions, principal where the projects warranted it, supporting on smaller-cast productions with directors he wanted to work with. The catalogue reflects a body of work that bridges European and American productions, bringing together experience across different corners of the screen industry.
Alongside the acting, he has built a portfolio of editorial and brand work. His editorial portfolio includes a feature in an online fashion magazine. The brand campaigns have run with labels whose visual world favours muted palettes and restrained tailoring. He treats the still work as adjacent to the acting rather than as a secondary career.
“For me, acting is most interesting when it feels like it contributes to something larger than the role itself,” he says.
The Romanian New Wave context is part of how he reads to American directors paging through tape. Romanian cinema since the early 2000s has built a global critical reputation for restraint, the long held shot rather than the cut, in films by Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, and Corneliu Porumboiu. Mungiu’s *4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days* won the Palme d’Or in 2007. Puiu’s *The Death of Mr. Lazarescu* won Un Certain Regard in 2005. That tradition is the working frame for Romanian actors in the international indie circuit.
What the PSA Still Does
A Romanian presidential broadcast does not surface in the algorithms American casting directors use to find emerging actors. The PSA is not portable in the way a Sundance credit is portable.
What it does establish is what Tomescu can carry. The launch film for România Educată required a principal performance that landed a national policy message as a personal one, without overplaying the seriousness of a project authorised by the head of state. The project then produced statute. The PSA is now the on-screen record of an actor in a leading role in a public production for a distinguished organisation, the Romanian Presidency, whose work resulted in primary legislation. That is a verifiable credit on the file.
Tomescu has a short film in post-production and more chapters of Sacrebleu still to come. He knows what kind of work he wants to do, and he has been consistent about doing it.
“I’m naturally drawn to stories that have intention behind them and stay with people after watching them,” he says to end the conversation.