L'occident

I like this movie, I like its construction, a blurred image that becomes clearer. Visan is like the wine in this movie, it has something inside him magic, a another dimension. More it gets older better he is. Hope so see more other movies of this quality. Congratulations for the "mise en scene". The rest of the actors are good enough as well. The context, if you are not Romanian, harder to be understood and felt like a Romanian could feel. I've spend a nice evening watching this, it is something different from the Hollywood dozen movies that are winning Oscars. It is real art and real art should stay in time, I hope that one day those movies would be easier to be found and seen on numeric format. It deserves an A++ for sure.

This is worth seeing for being from Romania alone, but also it´s a good movie. It takes place in present day Romania and over a few days you follow Nae and Sorina around in everyday events. In a "Short cuts" kind of way you first meet a this couple, and people they encounter and interact with are the people we follow around in the next part. In all you get to see the same events from three different angles which makes an interesting whole. Like in everyday day life, there are both sad and happy occurrences, that shows us that life is not black nor white. It´s partly based on the true stories that the director collected while working as a journalist, and partly based on his own and his friends experiences, which makes this movie very believable.

A beautiful story about time, coincidences and happenstance. Three stories intertwine and characters influence one another's life without ever knowing it. Excellent and convincing performances from both veteran actors and newcomers. Even though it made me laugh a lot, after I finished watching it didn't taste like a comedy, but more like a sad love story. And even though love doesn't conquer all (love between man and woman, love between friends, love for one's country), the story doesn't feel hopeless and bleak, not even once. A must-see for anyone interested in Eastern European productions.

PS: The version I saw had English subtitles, but they were sometimes incomplete and a couple of times rather badly translated. I felt they didn't do their best to do justice to the lines.

The movie achieved great success in Cannes festival. The greatest thing about it is the natural way of showing different stories around the same characters. Everyone could identify with one character in the movie. It is sad, showing that Romania is a country everyone wants to leave, seeking for a better life in Occident. Yet, the main character does not leave, not because he does not want to, but because he has nothing to do abroad. The movie shows different experiences from the point of view of each character. The end is unexpected, the further life of characters is unknown, you may imagine they succeeded abroad or not. Occident is not a social movie but a comedy, even if a black one, about people's goals, hopes, dreams. It does not want to emphasize the poverty in Romania, because it shows only the life of a certain group of people, which do not represent the entire Romanian nation. The team that made this movie is great, the director, the actors, the script, everything is great about this movie. This movie will change you, will make you wonder about things you never thought before.

I really liked this movie, I laughed most part of it, although it isn't a real comedy, but rather a drama. Yet, Ioan Gyuri Pascu makes a really funny role as the typical friend, neighbour and jack of all trades. All in all, the movie's charm is based on the way we get various pieces of information during each of its episodes, and we make up a story of our own, only to discover in the next episode of the film that it wasn't entirely true; most like in "Memento", or "Pulp Fiction", but in a stronger way, as we have here more different stories to follow, mix and clue together (similar to "E pericoloso sporgersi). Each episode shows us the same line of action, but with other details each time. The various pieces of information link one with the other only to show us that we are much too used to drawing conclusions of our own, without waiting to hear the narrator's. If you have the opportunity, go watch the movie. Although it is funnier for romanian people, the more likely to get the jokes and irony regarding everyday's life, it is entertaining as well for foreigners, due to the simple and amusing stories. "Occident" is riding the same wave as "Filantropica"; we hope to see some more good romanian cinema in the future as witty, ironic, sparkling and amusing as those ones.