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European Film Promotion, which gives a boost to films and talent from Europe, has revealed the jury for the 28th edition of European Shooting Stars, which showcases actors from the continent.

The jury is comprised of five film professionals who will select 10 actors. They will then take part in a program at the Berlin Film Festival, which runs Feb. 13 – 23. The jury will select the actors from candidates who have been nominated by their national film promotion institutes and film centers.

The jury includes former European Shooting Star Ludivine Sagnier, an actor best known for her roles in films by François Ozon. She starred in, among others, “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” (2000), “8 Women” (2002) and “Swimming Pool” (2003), and she will also appear in Ozon’s latest film, “Quand vient l’automne” (2024). Sagnier has also worked with directors such as P.J. Hogan, Lee Tamahori, Paolo Sorrentino, Hirokazu Koreeda and Ridley Scott.

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A humanitarian aid distribution center, a mild chaos of activity and people, all of them gathering up bags of food and supplies, loading them into SUVs, and heading off down mountain roads. It’s a public-facing show of altruism that gets laid down flat in Romanian filmmaker Radu Muntean’s latest, “Întregalde,” an incisive, mirthlessly amusing satire about the social contours of charity.

The camera briefly settles on Bucharest aid workers Cristina (Carmen Lopazan) and Radu (a quick cameo from director Muntean), and just as quickly abandons them after a scene-setting conversation about grateful aid recipients and the moral quicksand of loving one’s own virtuousness.

The story then follows three volunteers who split off from the other two: easily irritated Dan, pragmatic Ilinca and earnest Maria. Once inside Dan’s Land Rover, they’re free to gossip about Radu and Cristina and the vacation home they’re buying.

The three are headed for Întregalde,...

A lot gets lost in Radu Muntean’s fantastic “Întregalde.” Stuck in the mud as night falls in the thick of an increasingly sinister Romanian forest, people lose tempers, minds, control of their bowels, loyalties, ideals and maybe even a sense of themselves as decent, altruistic souls. But this uncannily gripping tragicomedy never loses your attention: Muntean, whose pedigree was established with 2010’s “Tuesday After Christmas,” but whose track record since has been more erratic than that of many of his Romanian New Wave peers, finds unexpectedly compelling new levels of scabrous humor and moving insight this time out. He is a filmmaker dynamically reborn amid the mulch and fallen leaves of the Transylvanian countryside, beside a stalled jeep that, like a Beckettian device, might be there but also might not.

In the back of the four-wheel-drive is Maria, who is riding with chatty, romantically frustrated Ilinca (Ilona Brezoianu) and quick-tempered,...

Three volunteer workers set out from Bucharest in a convoy destined for the mountainous hinterlands of Romania, where they plan to distribute aid supplies to remote villages. But when their SUV breaks down after they decide to help a lonely old man on a desolate mountain road, their notions of empathy and charity get put to the test. What begins as a kind of survival thriller takes a detour into the realm of social satire, as the do-gooders’ good intentions are put under the microscope.

“Întregalde,” which recently premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival, is the seventh feature film from Romanian New Wave veteran Radu Muntean. Produced by Dragos Vilcu of Bucharest-based Multimedia Est, it stars Maria Popistașu, Ilona Brezoianu, and Alex Bogdan as a trio of volunteer workers struggling to see the forest for the trees.

This week “Întregalde” screens during the Transilvania Intl.

For a festival that prides itself on shining a spotlight on the domestic industry, the Transilvania Film Festival can point to a record number of Romanian films unspooling at this year’s 20th-anniversary edition, with 32 feature-length and 13 short films – including 13 world premieres – set to screen in the scenic medieval city of Cluj from July 23 – Aug. 1.

But despite the historic selection, which includes three films arriving fresh off of Cannes premieres, it’s an uneasy time for the local film industry. Funding from the Romanian Film Center (Cnc) ground to a halt last year as the coronavirus pandemic leveled the Romanian economy, and an industry that for two decades has produced a string of world cinema heavyweights has been left to wonder what the future has in store.

Speaking ahead of this year’s festival, producer and TIFF founder Tudor Giurgiu spoke candidly about the ostensibly prolific output, crediting “the fortunate...

A trailer for Romanian director Radu Muntean’s eighth film and the fourth to be selected for Cannes has dropped ahead of its screening at this year’s Directors’ Fortnight.

“Întregalde,” the first acquisition of Romanian distribution company Voodoo Films’ sales arm, is a tense and mud-splattered affair that explores the true nature of altruism.

The film follows a trio of Millennials on their end-of-year mission to deliver parcels to a series of remote villages in rural Transylvania: there’s earnest Maria (Maria Popistasu), sociable Ilinca (Ilona Brezoianu) and SUV petrolhead Dan (Alex Bogdan).

The tone is set early on in an argument between a volunteer couple that Maria gets a lift with: Radu (the director in a cameo role) and Cristina (Carmen Lopazan), who chastises her boyfriend for feeling pleased with himself that an eight-year-old girl that he handed a tablet to remembered him from an earlier mission. She...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu)

From Escape from Alcatraz to Cool Hand Luke to The Shawshank Redemption, cinema is rich with not only prison films focused on the plight of the prisoner, but also depicting wardens in an evil light. Clemency, winner of the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, flips the script in both ways, both turning the spotlight on a warden and painting her in an empathetic, complicated light. Led by Alfre Woodard, she gives a riveting, emotional performance as the Bernadine Williams, a woman who is stuck between the demands of her grueling job and a disintegrating marriage, and can’t give her all to both.

Say “the Romanian New Wave” to folks who tend to order their cinema off-menu, and they’ll happily regale you with tales of long takes, deliberate paces, dour perspectives and a serious distrust of authority. They’ll also tell you that the country has produced some of the most complex, captivating movies of the past 15 years, and they’d be correct. Like sushi or Brian Eno’s solo albums, the bounty that’s come from the Eastern European nation’s post-Ceaușescu generation of filmmakers is an acquired taste; once that taste has been acquired,...