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Mammalia

Production on Sebastian Mihăilescu‘s debut film (it was known as Double Happiness then) in October of 2021 and it received an invite to Berlinale’s Forum section. The Romanian filmmaker’s Mammalia is described as a surreal drama exploring contemporary masculinity via a man who wakes to discover his penis has disappeared during the night. Bucharest is the film’s backdrop. Microfilm’s Diana Păroiu and Ada Solomon produced the film. The cast includes István Téglás, Mălina Manovici, Denisa Nicolae, Steliana Bălăcianu, Rolando Matsangos, Mirela Crețan, Andreea Gheorghe, Mircea Bujoreanu, Marian Pîrvu, Dan Zarug Mihai, and Elena Chingălată.

Gist: This follows a 39-year-old man who embarks on a dreamlike journey where the mundane and the fantastic intertwine.…...

John Malkovich starrer Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes and Alex Gibney’s untitled Boris Becker documentary are set to have their world premieres at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival next year. The projects are among the six titles which will play in the fest’s Berlinale Special Gala section, which also includes Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth and Cleopatra Coleman and Todd Field’s Tár.

Infinity Pool will get its European premiere at the festival while Field and Tár stars Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir will attend the festival to give a public talk as part of the Berlinale Talents section.

The festival also announced its first project from its Berlinale Series section: Zdf’s eco-thriller The Swarm (Der Schwarm), based on the eponymous bestseller by Frank Schätzing. The project follows an international group of scientists who do research...

With his third feature, rising Romanian director Paul Negoescu reaches back to a time when Woody Allen’s name was associated with intelligent romantic comedies and jazz, delivering a film drenched in Allen-esque situations replanted in Bucharest. That in itself is fine, yet while “The Story of a Summer Lover” is intended as an homage to those classic films, down to the use of music and specific urban settings, Negoescu lacks the ability to make his schlubby characters interesting.

Instead, this overly chatty story of a math professor who finds more satisfaction sleeping with nubile students than with his girlfriend merely hauls out yet another bunch of unexceptional navel-gazing characters whose physical and intellectual attractions will escape most audiences’ comprehension. It’s good to see Romanian cinema continuing to diversify, but this isn’t quite the thinking man’s comedy it very much wants to be.

The triumvirate of friends...