Stuff That Bear!

Brilliant, charming, funny and heart-breaking, "Stuff That Bear!" is the best short film I've ever seen. Bruno Coppola is a genius and this film is a must-see. The actors -- particularly Romania's best actress Carmen Ungureanu -- are spectacular in three of the most original roles ever written. And the cinematography is unbelievable, spectacular, feels like a huge and wonderful feature even though it's only 19 mins. I've heard that this film has played in 12 different countries but we in Hungary only saw it yesterday for the first time. Why is this film not shown even more? It says more about East and West than anything else out there, short or long. Fantastic. Go, Bruno!

This is a visionary work of a genius. It's the most poignant, poetic, sensitive, exciting and beautiful film I have ever seen. Set in Bucharest, shot at night, it is full of mystery, adventure, romance and danger. It tells the story of two men who are in love with the same very glamorous woman. The story is compelling, the actors are excellent, the photography is breathtaking - at Cannes, the director of photography has won the Palme d'Or, and Coppola won Best Short Film. The film has won dozens of awards in film festivals around the world ... because it has a magic who can reach audiences around the world. In fifteen minutes, Coppola has produced a real miracle.

This is the best short film I've ever seen. It won the Kodak Prize here at the Cannes Film Festival and it was a big hit across Europe and the USA. It has humor, intelligence, love, sex, robbery, kidnapping, smuggling, bribery, pole-dancing, taxidermy and escape across international borders - and that's just the first four minutes. I don't know how they did it, but these film-makers turned a small idea into the most accomplished and affecting film I've seen in years. The acting (Carmen Ungureanu), the writing (Laureen Vonnegut) and the cinematography (Oleg Mutu, Palme d'Or Winner at Cannes) are all world-class. If this is what Bruno Coppola can do in a short, I can't wait to see him make a feature film.

tension mounts between one brother's romantic desire to create new possibilities within his milieu, and the other brother's pecuniary compulsion to escape into a new world of deep pockets and streets paved with gold.

Stuff That Bear! works well because of its' universal truth, and because of the Bucharest environment that looks so much like all of the romance language countries.

As good as the story is, the killer gem is the cinematography, shot artfully in available light, giving the audience an intimate connection to the conflicted characters.