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The highly prolific Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude has, in the past year alone, directed two fictional features, co-directed a feature-length documentary, and released a one-hour experimental film made entirely of webcam footage shot at Andy Warhol’s grave.

Unlike his more famous fellow countryman, the Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, whose intricately crafted dramas come out every four or five years, Jude likes to make movies quick and dirty, as if his productions had a hard time keeping up with all the ideas racing through his head. His last two features — Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn — were both ripped-from-the-headlines satires that felt fast, fresh and utterly contemporary, like they were shot on the fly.

The same could be said for his latest morality tale, Kontinental ’25, which has more of a universal bent yet makes references...

Exclusive: The women and gender-expansive-focused training initiative Circle has unveiled the line-up for the second edition of its Circle Fiction Orbit in Montenegro, with mentors including award-winning directors Jasmila Žbanić and Pia Marais this year.

The event – unfolding in the Montenegrin resort coastal resort town of Herceg Novi from November 24 to December 1 – is supporting a diverse line-up of six fiction projects with strong international potential.

They include historic drama Tethys Ocean by Polish director Anna Jadowska, who made waves with 2022 bank robbery drama Woman On The Roof, and award-winning Slovenian director Barbara Zemljič’s It Will Fade Away, following a woman who discovers her daughter is being sexually harassed by a child at her kindergarten. (scroll down for full list of projects).

Oscar nominated Romanian producer Bianca Oana, whose credits include Berlinale Golden Bear winner Touch Me Not and Oscar-nominated doc Collective, has returned as head of studies for a second year.

The Cannes competition line-up has premiered some outstanding Romanian films over the last 20 years, works on the very foamy, frothy edge of the Romanian New Wave. But this year’s talky, ensemble-driven neo-realist entrant, Three Kilometers to the End of the World, isn’t on the same level as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Still, actor-turned-director Emanuel Parvu (Meda or The Not So Bright Side of Things) has fashioned the kind of competent if predictable drama that will tick the right boxes for festival regulars hungry for work that affirms their prejudices against bigoted hicks in all the fly-over countries of the world. A drama about a vicious beating that ends up turning over rocks that hide corruption and cruelty, Three Kilometers at least wrings maximum benefit from its beautiful Danube Delta location, a sun-dappled marshland full of whispering reeds fringed by unspoiled beaches. If...

Exclusive: Female and non-binary filmmaker-focused international training initiative Circle has kicked off its inaugural Circle Fiction Orbit initiative at a meeting in Montenegro and unveiled the participants.

The new program extends Circle’s activities beyond its founding Woman Doc Accelerator program, which has supported some 50 non-fiction projects since its launch five years ago.

Employing the same methodology as the Doc Accelerator, the inaugural fiction initiative is supporting five fiction projects in development.

They include Greenlandic birthday party-set drama Kaffemi, from director Pipaluk Jørgensen, whose short film Ivalu was Oscar nominated this year, and screenwriter-actress Nukâka Coster Waldau.

Italian director Irene Dionisio participates with Idda about two childhood friends who reconnect as they scale the perilous slopes of Mount Etna. Dionisio previously made waves with Pawn Streets which played in Venice Critics’ Week.

Finnish director Laura Hyppönen and producer Merja Ritola (Greenlit Productions) are attending with Lex Julia, exploring the dynamics...

Clearly the Covid-19 scenario’s been on Cristi Puiu’s mind. After all, the Romanian director loudly voiced his opposition to mask mandates when on the publicity trail of his previous outing, the more impressive turn-of-the-century period drama Malmkrog. While his latest work is hardly a call-to-arms, Puiu is all-too-keen to bring up his disdain for bureaucracy, its concoction of corrupt officials and untrustworthy political leadership that brings forth the societal (or personal) fragility at the heart of his films. Mmxx‘s four pandemic vignettes mark alluring, somewhat wayward film that’s in turns provocative and frustratingly opaque.

The medley of pandemic anecdotes are a psychotherapy session helmed by Oana (Bianca Cuculici), whose questioning of a new patient appears to reveal more her own discomforts than the person she’s treating; a nighttime scene in which Oana’s brother (Laurențiu Bondarenco) prepares a party, interrupted by a medical emergency involving...

It’s rare that European cinema impacts on Hollywood but it’s exciting when there’s a trickle-down effect, like the connection to be made between Denmark’s stripped-down Dogme movies, which launched in Cannes in the late ’90s, and Steven Spielberg’s decision to go back to basics with Catch Me If You Can a few years later. It’s a moot point how many will ever see Romanian director Radu Jude’s follow-up to his 2021 Berlinale winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, but, like Bob Dylan going electric or the Sex Pistols making their ramshackle debut at a London art school, this wilfully uncommercial but bloody-minded film could be genuinely seminal in its anarchic and totally individualistic approach, slipping discordant, Godardian subversion into a darkly comic, Ruben Östlund-style human drama.

The intro suggests a boring academic exercise, positing the first half (“A”) as...

Spain’s San Sebastian film festival unveiled its first group of competition titles Friday, naming a typically eclectic mix of established art house favorites — Cristi Puiu, Joachim Lafosse, Robin Campillo — and rising talents, including Maria Alche, Benjamín Naishtat and American debutant Raven Jackson whose first feature, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, will be competing for San Sebastian’s Golden Shell this year.

Produced by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is described as a lyrical exploration of the life of a Black woman in Mississippi and stars The Woman King‘s Sheila Atim.

A second American title, the comedy Ex-Husbands from director Noah Pritzker (Quitters), also made the San Sebastian cut. Rosanna Arquette, Griffin Dunne, Miles Heizer, James Norton and Eisa Davis are part of the ensemble cast in a story focused on a father (Dunne) overwhelmed by the twin crises of an impending divorce...

The 71st San Sebastian Film Festival runs September 22-30.

Robin Campillo’s Red Island and Cristi Puiu’s Mmxx are among the first titles to be selected in competition for this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival (September 22-30).

Campillo makes his first appearance competing at the festival with French-Belgium co-production Red Island about the French colonisation of Madagascar. The French director’s previous film Bpm (Beats Per Minute) screened in the festival’s Pearl strand in 2017 after winning the jury prize at Cannes earlier that year.

Also competing in competition for the first time is Argentinian director Martín Rejtman...

A bevy of established auteurs – Joachim Lafosse, Cristi Puiu, Robin Campillo and Martín Rejtman – rub shoulders with the fast-rising figures of Maria Alche and Benjamín Naishtat and new U.S. discovery Raven Jackson among a first batch of directors contending in main competition at September’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

Also in the mix, announced Friday, is U.S. writer-director Noah Pritzker (“Quitters”) whose “Ex-Husbands” headlines “After Hours” co-stars Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette.

Always open to a broader gamut of movies than many other “A” festivals, the first features confirmed for San Sebastian on Friday include four comedies with a change of register to lighter comedy for both Naishtat and Alche, who triumphed at 2018’s San Sebastián with “Rojo” and “A Family Submerged,” best director and Horizontes winners respectively.

The biggest movie event in the Spanish-speaking world – which means ever more as Spanish-language titles hit big viewerships on streaming...

When “Avatar 2: Way of the Water” surged to the top of the Romanian box office earlier this year to become the highest-grossing film of all time, it marked an auspicious sign for a theatrical business still looking to recover from the doldrums of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet local industry-watchers were even more encouraged to see a historic first in 2022, with two Romanian films cracking the top 10 at the year-end box office — a striking achievement for an industry that hasn’t historically been known for cranking out crowd-pleasing hits.

Topping the list was “Teambuilding,” a satirical workplace comedy from directors Matei Dima, Alex Coteț and Cosmin Nedelcu, which briefly reigned as the top-grossing film ever in Romania before being knocked from its perch by James Cameron’s blockbuster, which has raked in more than $8.3 million to date.

Meanwhile, first-time filmmaker Cristian Ilișuan’s “Mirciulică,” a comedy about a 30-year-old forced...

Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu is a master of the slow-burn drama. His careful cinematic style — using wide master shots and long takes, allowing the action to play out within the frame without edits — is put to service in exploring complex, hot-button social issues — abortion in his 2007 Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, state corruption in 2016’s Graduation — with a calm, almost scientific precision.

Mungiu’s latest, R.M.N., takes this scientific approach literally. The title is the Romanian acronym for an Mri, which one of the characters receives in the film, and the movie, which hits U.S. cinemas on April 28, is Mungiu’s cinematic brain scan of his country, revealing the layers of illness — racial, social, political, and above all emotional — buried in the national psyche.

The plot, inspired by real events, takes place over the Christmas holidays in a small village in Transylvania. Matthias (Marin Grigore), a slaughterhouse worker,...

Michel Dimopoulos, former director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, has died. He was 74.

Dimopoulos served as Thessaloniki’s artistic director from 1991 to 2005. In a statement published Thursday afternoon, the festival said Dimopoulos brought a “fresh breath of originality” to Thessaloniki during his tenure and “expanded the institution’s international horizons.”

“Michel had always been on the side of the Festival and its people. He was an ardent film lover and a passionate supporter of independent European cinema,” the statement read.

“He will live on in Olympion’s corridors, in the Port, inside the movie theaters, tireless and with a smile on his face, soulfully speaking for the films he loved, expanding our horizons and introducing us to the pioneering and restless cinema of the new era.”

Dimopoulos was born in 1949 in Paris. He studied cinema in France and began his career as a film critic in Avgi, a daily left-wing newspaper published in Athens,...

Because a list is never done and because we were inspired to dig that bit further, we have a few more updates on potential Cannes contenders this year.

Below is Part Two of our selection of movies we hear are in the conversation. You can read about our first wave of potentials here, including Scorsese, Indiana Jones 5 and Johnny Depp’s comeback movie.

Related Story From ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ & ‘Indiana Jones’ To ‘Jeanne Du Barry’ & ‘The Old Oak’: 32 Movies From Across The Globe That Could Light Up The Cannes Film Festival Related Story International Insider: Cannes Contenders; London's Time To Shine; Danish Diversity Debate; ITV Finances; Ken Loach Union Row Related Story Ruben Östlund Set As 2023 Cannes Film Festival Jury President

Among anticipated films it has become clear to us in recent days are unlikely to debut are Kirill Serebrennikov’s Limonov, Sean Durkin’s Iron Claw,...

If Cristian Mungiu isn’t the most prolific filmmaker to emerge from Romanian cinema’s gilded age, he does tend to cause a stir. Cristi Puiu was first in the door at Cannes, bringing Stuff and Dough to Director’s Fortnight in 2001, and the first to win a prize with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu in 2005, but it was Mungiu who got the big one.

Since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days achieved that feat in 2007, Mungiu has released just three films. “I’m a filmmaker, this is what gives some sense to my life,” Mungiu explained last week in an office just inland from the Lumiere Theatre where his latest had premiered a few nights previous, “I’d like to make a film every two years, but I’m not smart enough to come up with something important to say. I think that there’s already too much material, too many films.

Romania’s Puiu competed for the Palme d’Or in 2016 with ‘Sieranevada’.

The next feature from feted Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu is among 12 titles selected for FIDLab, the co-production incubator of French festival FIDMarseille.

The 14th edition of the showcase, known for its focus on experimental documentary and fiction features, is set to be held from July 7-8 and will return as an in-person for the first time since 2019.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The selection includes Mmxx, an ensemble drama from Romanian director Puiu that revolves around a therapist, her younger brother, husband and an organised crime investigator.

The white-hot moment of the Romanian new-wave film renaissance is long in the past. “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” came out in 2005, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007. Other landmarks of Romanian cinema also now go back quite a ways, like “Police, Adjective” (2009), “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” (2010), and “Graduation” (2016). That’s not to say there haven’t been good Romanian films of late — earlier this year, I championed Two Lottery Tickets, a kind of droll Romanian Jim Jarmusch film. The bitter truth, though, is that over the last decade the profile of international impact and acclaim that Romanian cinema once held has radically diminished.

It might jump-start again with the appearance of “Miracle,” one of the best films I’ve seen at the Venice Film Festival. It’s the third feature written and directed by Bogdan George Apetri, and it shares many of the classic qualities of Romanian cinema.

A version of this story about “Collective” first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

The Oscar category of Best Documentary was once a reliable safe haven for homegrown American films, but in recent years it has gone international. Since 2015, there have been at least one, and often two, non-English-language titles among the nominees. Films like Italy’s “Fire at Sea,” France’s “Faces Places,” and Brazil’s “The Edge of Democracy” have told stories not with an outsider’s eye, but from within the counties and cultures in which they take place.

But no film had ever been nominated for Best Documentary and Best International Feature Film (formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film) until North Macedonia’s “Honeyland” turned that trick last year. This year the doubleheader occurred again with Alexander Nanau’s “Collective,” an accomplishment that was even more notable considering...

Oliver Twist meets “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” in Ferit Karahan’s sophomore feature, “Brother’s Keeper.” Set in a snowbound boarding school on the eastern edges of Turkey, the film tells the story of a boy desperate to get help for his sick friend yet stymied at every turn by bullying teachers and corrupt administrators. While Karahan (“The Fall From Heaven”) builds the narrative in a resolutely effective manner, ensuring the child’s increasing desperation gets under the audience’s skin, the scenario’s predictability and the stereotyped depiction of the adults impede emotional involvement.

Institutional coldness typifies everything about this large school situated in a neglected part of the country, staffed by cruel instructors perpetuating an age-old cycle of abuse. Showers are allowed only once a week, the hot water (when there is hot water) a welcome relief from the frigid climate and the broken heating pipes. But when some boys get unruly,...

"But we really must continue this discussion." Sovereign Film Distribution has debuted a new trailer for the UK release of Malmkrog arriving on VOD there starting in March. The film originally premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival, and also stopped by the New York Film Festival and many others. Malmkrog, which translates to Manor House (the alternate release title), is the latest film from acclaimed Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu and runs a full 3 hours, 20 minutes but gets into some intense discussions. The film is made up almost entirely of conversations between guests at a house. A landowner, a politician, a countess, a General and his wife, all gather in a spacious manor and discuss death, war, progress and morality. As the time passes by, the discussion becomes more serious and heated. Starring Frédéric Schulz-Richard, Agathe Bosch, Diana Sakalauskaité, Marina Palii, Ugo Broussot, and István Téglás. Critics have been raving...

Sovereign Film Distribution has acquired U.K. and Ireland rights to writer-director Cristi Puiu’s Berlin and Seville winner “Malmkrog” (Manor House).

Puiu won the best director award at the Encounters section of the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, in addition to best screenplay and the Golden Giraldillo Award for best film at the Seville European Film Festival.

An adaptation of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s book “Three Conversations,” “Malmkrog” follows a politician, a countess, a general and his wife as they gather over the Christmas holidays in a manor house to discuss death, war, progress and morality. As the debate becomes more heated, cultural differences become increasingly apparent and the mood grows tense.

The film is billed as a unique mixture of “Downton Abbey” and Dostoyevsky, as it recalls the drawing room masterworks of Max Ophüls, and the stark cerebral work of Ingmar Bergman.

The cast includes Frederic Schulz-Richard, Agathe Bosch,...

The Venice International Film Festival has unveiled an all-European jury for its 77th edition as Venice prepares to host the first major film event since the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

British director Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir), French actress Ludivine Sagnier (8 Women, Swimming Pool) and Austrian filmmaker Veronika Franz (Goodnight Mommy) will join Venice jury president Cate Blanchett to hand out the honors to the competition entries this year, including the coveted Golden Lion. Alongside the four women will be German director Christian Petzold (Undine, Barbara), Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) and Italian writer Nicola Lagioia.

Given the uncertainty ...

The Venice International Film Festival has unveiled an all-European jury for its 77th edition as Venice prepares to host the first major film event since the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

British director Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir), French actress Ludivine Sagnier (8 Women, Swimming Pool) and Austrian filmmaker Veronika Franz (Goodnight Mommy) will join Venice jury president Cate Blanchett to hand out the honors to the competition entries this year, including the coveted Golden Lion. Alongside the four women will be German director Christian Petzold (Undine, Barbara), Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) and Italian writer Nicola Lagioia.

Given the uncertainty ...

The 77th Venice Film Festival (September 2 – 12) has revealed all jury members, with Competition jury president Cate Blanchett joined by Austrian director Veronika Franz (Goodnight Mommy), Brit filmmaker Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir), Italian writer Nicola Lagioia, German filmmaker Christian Petzold (Barbara), Romanian director Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) and French actress Ludivine Sagnier (La Vérité).

The Orizzonti jury will be presided over by French director Claire Denis (High Life), and comprise Oskar Alegria (Spain), Francesca Comencini (Italy), Katriel Schory (Israel) and Christine Vachon (USA).

The selectors of the “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film are Claudio Giovannesi (Italy) as president, Remi Bonhomme (France) and Dora Bouchoucha (Tunisia).

The festival’s Venice Virtual Reality jury will be headed by Celine Tricart as president (USA), and also include Asif Kapadia (Great Britain) and Hideo Kojima (Japan).

The festival, the first major physical film get-together since the pandemic struck earlier this year,...

It’s difficult to exactly quantify the impact of Cristi Puiu’s second feature. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a film about an ambulance worker’s attempts to get care for a dying man against the backdrop of a disinterested and bureaucratic healthcare system. It won Puiu the main award in Un Certain Regard at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival; kick-started what would become known as the Romanian New Wave; and paved the way for his compatriot Christian Mungiu to win the Palme d’Or with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days just two years after. If Mungiu’s film was Romania’s Parasite, in a sense Puiu’s was its Oldboy.

His third feature, Aurora (2010), explored some similar themes but over the last decade Puiu branched out to experimental literary adaptation and dialogue-heavy chamber piece. Those two threads come together in Malmkrog, an adaptation of three conversations by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov,...

There’s plenty of wit to be found in the films that constitute the Romanian New Wave, but any laughs they elicit wind up sounding more like dry coughs. These movies tend to find their humor in subjects like an overburdened health-care system (“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”), corruption in the education system (“Graduation”), family strife (“Sieranevada”) and other topics relevant to the nation dealing with the lingering aftereffects of the Ceausescu era.

So even if writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu seems more amenable to absurdist comedy — and genre conventions — than his peers in this talented community, his latest film “The Whistlers” still traffics in bleak chuckles.

It’s a wonderfully labyrinthine story of cops and robbers that might not be an official sequel to Porumboiu’s 2009 “Police, Adjective” (that year’s Romanian Oscar entry), but it does explore many of that film’s concerns, from the subtle distinctions between law and...

In Malmkrog, a group of Russian aristocrats gather in a grand rural estate to wax philosophical during a long and luxurious dinner party. The film offers seemingly the closest thing to a direct screen staging of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s War and Christianity: The Three Conversations. At 200 minutes, it runs just a few breaths short of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but seldom ever leaves the confines of the decadent surrounding–indeed, the majority takes place in just three rooms. The dialogue sounds as if it has been taken verbatim. The camera hardly moves. We recommend caffeine, or perhaps something stronger.

Malmkrog was directed by Cristi Puiu, a filmmaker of the Romanian New Wave who first appeared on most people’s radars with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu in 2005, a film so vital and urgent it seemed to almost singlehandedly propel Romanian cinema to the top of the game for a while.

"But is to be killed... an absolute evil?" Shellac has debuted the first official promo trailer for a loquacious historical drama titled Malmkrog, premiering in the "Encounters" section at the Berlin Film Festival this month. Malmkrog, which translates to Manor House, is the latest film from acclaimed Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu and runs a full 3 hours, 20 minutes (no surprise from an Eastern European filmmaker). The film is made up almost entirely of conversations between guests at a house. A landowner, a politician, a countess, a General and his wife, all gather in a spacious manor and discuss death, war, progress and morality. As the time passes by, the discussion becomes more serious and heated. Starring Frédéric Schulz-Richard, Agathe Bosch, Diana Sakalauskaité, Marina Palii, Ugo Broussot, and István Téglás. If you're into this kind of intellectual cinema, then you don't want to miss this. But I fully understand if you're not...

Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for Cristi Puiu’s “Malmkrog,” the opening film of the Berlin Film Festival’s new competitive strand, Encounters. Shellac is handling world sales.

“Malmkrog” is set at the manor house of an aristocratic landowner in Transylvania. Among the handpicked guests who have arrived to spend the Christmas holidays are a politician, a young countess, and a general with his wife. Over sumptuous meals and parlor games, the guests discuss progress and morality, death and the Antichrist. As the debate grows more heated, cultural rifts between them begin to emerge, and the climate becomes increasingly tense.

The 200-minute drama is based on a text by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. “The problems posed by adapting a real event for the screen are to a large extent contiguous with those that arise in the case of creating a film version of a literary text,...

‘Shirley’, starring Elisabeth Moss, among films in the new competitive strand.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has unveiled the 15 features that will comprise its first ever Encounters competitive strand.

The new section has been introduced to support new voices in cinema, running alongside the long-established competition and Berlinale Shorts, which award the Golden and Silver Bears.

A three-member jury, which has yet to be announced, will choose the winners of best film, best director and a special jury award.

The section will open with Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog, a 200-minute drama in which an elite group of individuals...

Above: some runners-up among my favorite posters of the decade. From left: Black Swan by La Boca (2010); Obit (2016) by Kristin Bye; Nebraska (2013) by Blt Communications; Wreck-It Ralph (2012) designer unknown; Escapes (2017) by Brandon Schaefer.Ten years ago, not long after I had started writing about movie posters for Mubi (back when it was called The Auteurs), I was called upon to come up with my favorite movie posters of the decade. It was a daunting task since I hadn’t been keeping track quite as carefully as I have these past ten years, but it was also somewhat of a novelty since there weren’t a lot of people talking about movie posters either in print or online back then. Looking back at that list of ten years ago, there are a couple of posters I might not choose today and I’d definitely bump Neil Kellerhouse’s poster for The Girlfriend Experience...

“Cinema is not about advertising or propaganda. Cinema is not about beauty or beautiful images. Cinema is about truth.”

So stated Romanian director Cristi Puiu, delivering a masterclass at the Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival.

A pioneer of the “Romanian New Wave” movement, Puiu won the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes for his film “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005). His films “Aurora” (2010) and “Sieranevada” (2016) also played at Cannes.

Philosophical and contemplative, Puiu spoke out against filmmakers who “push an agenda” with “propaganda films.”

“The problem with propaganda films is that you are betraying yourself first as a human,” he cautioned. “If you are genuinely curious to find out who you are, you are going to leave this propaganda field.”

Truth, he added, is not something that filmmakers can articulate and reach – rather it is “like a destination for eternity.” He also explained that truth is difficult to achieve...

Nine international documentary films and one judge. That’s the unique competition format for Opus Bonum, the section dedicated to international documentary titles at Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Oct. 24-29).

Films from France, the U.K., Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, India, Madagascar, Egypt and Palestine play in the competition section, and the winner will be chosen by famed Romanian director Cristi Puiu. Known as the father of the Romanian New Wave, Puiu’s credits include 2005’s Cannes Un Certain Regard prize winner “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.”

Launched in 2006, the format for Opus Bonum was conceived as a way of countering the compromises that are inherent in the functioning of traditional film festival juries. “We ask one really significant cinematic person to decide which is the best film – it is a really personal choice,” says festival director Marek Hovorka.

He explains that Puiu was selected as...

When Corneliu Porumboiu began making films in Romania just after the turn of the century, we knew what Romanian cinema was like — or, at least, we knew what the branch that came to be known as the Romanian New Wave was like. The movement, one of the most vital cinematic eruptions of the 2000s, was full of dark, minimalist, realist films that depicted, either overtly or implicitly, a society that was rotten to the core.

There’s some of that in Porumboiu’s “The Whistlers,” which had its world premiere on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is dark and it’s set in a world where you can’t trust anyone — but it’s also got John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock homages and enough twists and turns to require a detailed scorecard.

“The Whistlers” is no minimalist slice of realism, but an oversized, deliciously twisted ride that...

Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu makes playful movies with a lot to say. From the chatty historical inquiries of his debut “12:08 East of Bucharest” to the deadpan musings on the language of justice in “Police, Adjective” to the ethics of filmmaking in “When Evening Falls in Bucharest or Metabolism,” Porumboiu has managed to mine compelling ideas out of slow-burn narrative techniques loaded with unpredictability. With 2015’s heartwarming father-son story “The Treasure” — in which the roving narrative builds to sentimental payoff — he started to enrich his style with more approachable methods. That proclivity grows even stronger with his entertaining noir “The Whistlers,” a polished mashup of genre motifs that suggests what might happen if the “Ocean’s 11” gang assembled on the Canary Islands.

That’s right: One of the directors tied to the so-called Romanian New Wave of the aughts, when dreary masterpieces like “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and Two Days” and “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu...

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

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard)

Drew Goddard’s follow-up to The Cabin in the Woods seemed to come and go without much fervor this past fall, but there are more than a few reasons to seek it out. Less labyrinthine-esque plotted than his last film, perhaps the fairly straightforward ending threw people for a loop, but I appreciated the well-spun crime drama, which takes more than a few compelling detours. And if you also thought Cynthia Erivo was wasted in Steve McQueen’s Widows, she gets a much more fleshed-out supporting turn here and reason enough to watch. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: Amazon,...

Contemporary Romanian cinema has established its steady presence in world cinema after the new wave boom. New talent emerged this year at Berlinale, where Ioana Uricaru introduced Lemonade, while experienced filmmaker Radu Jude netted the top honor at this year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians. Locarno is no stranger to Romanian cinema; the Swiss gathering presented testosterone dramedy Charleston last year and brought the much expected, most recent effort by Radu Muntean, Alice T.. Following Tuesday, After Christmas and One Floor Below, the Romanian filmmaker returns on the festival circuit with a story co-penned by Razvan Ratulescu, the co-writer of the iconic The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Child's Pose, and Alexander Baciu...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

For a movement that announced itself with a proverbial flatline, with Cristi Puiu’s dry, sardonic, darkly comic “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005), the Romanian New Wave seems poised for a dramatic rebirth.

More than a decade after Puiu took home the Un Certain Regard Award, and Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or in 2007 for his harrowing abortion drama, “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” Romanian cinema is on the brink of a “new New Wave,” says Transilvania Intl. Film Festival artistic director Mihai Chirilov.

As the fest unspools its essential Romanian Days program, beginning on May 30, audiences are witnessing “first-time filmmakers that… are completely different than the aesthetic of the New Wave,” says Chirilov. Breaking from the muted palettes, flat compositions, and slow-burn realism of their predecessors, they’re bringing “a more than welcome freshness to what Romanian cinema is, and the idea of how Romanian cinema is perceived abroad.

The Oldenburg Film Festival, Germany's leading international indie fest, is again this year inviting producers and directors to a one-day co-production meet to pitch their latest projects.

The so-called Matchbox co-production lounge, which will run Sept. 16, will this year include a mix of industry veterans and newcomers to the indie scene. Among the veterans are acclaimed Romanian director Cristi Puiu, whose The Death of Mr. Lazarescu won Cannes Un Certain Regard award in 2005 and who was in Cannes competition last year with Sieranevada. Together with his long-time production partner Anca Puiu, he will be coming to Oldenburg to...

A few years after the beginning of what has been labeled the "New Romanian Cinema" the aesthetic and moral agenda of filmmakers working under this banner threatened to become a mere cliché. Too often corruption was filmed with static long shots, too many colors vanished from the images and too much emphasis was placed on the same actors acting in similar roles. The director Radu Jude, who worked as an assistant for Cristi Puiu on the movement's seminal The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), made some strong short films like Shadow of a Cloud (2013), none of which insinuated that he would be the one taking the (not only social) realism of Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristian Mungiu and friends to a new level. His latest documentary The Dead Nation shows a filmmaker who has discovered a special way of looking at and behind images. That alone does not qualify for a different approach in Romanian cinema,...

In recent years, the Cannes film festival has been uniquely receptive to films about innocent saps falling into bureaucratic black holes. Directors like Cristi Puiu and Ken Loach tapped that very formula for their respective Un Certain Regard and Palme d’Or winners “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “I, Daniel Blake.” And if Sergei Loznitsa’s “A Gentle Creature” offers another riff on a familiar nightmare, it does so with a dream-like approach and a feverish style that makes the subject feel bracingly vital. Actress Vasilina Makovtseva is that titular creature, an unnamed woman with a husband in prison and a.

To director Cristian Mungiu, Romania is not just a country – it's a state of mind. The 48-year-old filmmaker grew up in a post-communist society, one where citizens still feel the boot of Soviet rule that ended nearly three decades ago with the overthrow of Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. His latest, Graduation, isn't quite on the landmark level of his searing 2007 abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but this gripping film still sizzles with Mungiu's social-realist concern for people who believe they can't raise their position based on merit alone. In that sense,...

Keep up with the always-hopping film festival world with our weekly Film Festival Roundup column. Check out last week’s Roundup right here.

Lineup Announcements

– Exclusive: The 12th Annual Sunscreen Film Festival announced its official selections for the 2017 event featuring films with Alec Baldwin, Dylan McDermott, John Cleese, Daphne Zuniga and more. Opening night will feature Michael Mailer’s newest film, “Blind,” a romantic-drama, starring Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore and Dylan McDermott. Closing night will wrap up the festival with “Albion: The Enchanted Stallion,” a family fantasy adventure, starring John Cleese, Debra Messing, Jennifer Morrison and Stephen Dorff.

Retrospective Screenings will include Daphne Zuniga appearance at the festival honoring the 30th anniversary of “Spaceballs.” Also in this category will be “The Greatest Show on Earth,” from 1952 directed by Cecile B. DeMille, which won the Oscar for Best Pictures and Best Writing in 1953. The screening will honor the closing of the Ringling Bros.

by Bill Curran

Laying in regal and rotting repose, the glorious tendrils of a white M-shaped wig framing his ashen face, King Louis Xiv of France, in the year 1717, spends his final days dying atop luxurious satins and attended to by hand-wringing bureaucrats and a largely silent wife in Albert Serra’s (you guessed it) The Death of Louis Xiv.

As far as “death trip” movies go, Louis Xiv is a quintessential ordeal. Like moths around the flame, the films in this still-thriving trend announce the demise (or prolonged distress) of their subjects up front, with imminence and duration the focus, often with a titular clue to the narrative framework: The Passion of the Christ, Last Days, 12 Years a Slave, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, 127 Hours, Day Night Day Night, Hunger, Two Days, One Night, and Son of Saul, to name but a few...

Cristi Puiu. Photo by Alexi Pelekanos, courtesy of the ViennaleSieranevada, Cristi Puiu's latest fictional feature film is not only a fictional film, it is a film about fiction. It is about the fictions and lies we escape to in order to live on. Moreover, it is about the impotence when realizing that we are living in this net of fictions and lies. When asked about his viewing habits the Romanian director loves to stress that he prefers documentary to fictional cinema. Many of those who have written about Puiu focus on the so-called documentary qualities of his cinema, meaning his kind of realism, the way his camera and editing does not interfere too much with the action. Such observations are arguable to say the least because for Puiu, who has made some documentaries inspired by Raymond Depardon like 25.12.1995, București, Gara de Nord (1996) or 13 - 19 iulie 1998, Craiova, Azilul de batrani...

This weekend the Toronto International Film Festival will have the North American premiere of The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, a film which Mubi will be releasing theatrically in the Us and UK next year. Winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year (a prize won in recent years by such gems as Blissfully Yours, The Best of Youth, Moolaadé, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Tulpan, Dogtooth, The Missing Picture, White God and Rams) this beautiful, charming love story set in the world of boxing will be Mubi’s first ever theatrical release.Set in Finland in 1962 (the Finnish title Hymyilevä Mies translates as Smiling Man), The Happiest Day... tells the true story of national featherweight champion Olli Mäki and his world championship fight against American Davey Moore (a tragic figure commemorated in Bob Dylan’s song “Who Killed Davey Moore?”). Director Juho Kuosmanen...

A decade after jumpstarting the Romanian New Wave with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu returns with a virtuosic chamber drama set largely within a labyrinthine Bucharest apartment where a cantankerous extended family has gathered forty days after its patriarch’s death (and three days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris). Rituals and meals are anticipated and delayed, doors open and close, and the camera hovers at thresholds and in corridors. As claustrophobia mounts, heated, humorous exchanges—about the old Communist days and the present age of terror—coalesce into a brilliantly staged and observed portrait of personal and social disquiet. “Sieranevada” was directed by Cristi Puiu. The New York Film [ Read More ]

The post New York Film Festival 2016: Sieranevada Gets Another New Clip appeared first on Shockya.com.

A decade after jumpstarting the Romanian New Wave with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Cristi Puiu returns with a virtuosic chamber drama set largely within a labyrinthine Bucharest apartment where a cantankerous extended family has gathered forty days after its patriarch’s death (and three days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris). Rituals and meals are anticipated and delayed, doors open and close, and the camera hovers at thresholds and in corridors. As claustrophobia mounts, heated, humorous exchanges—about the old Communist days and the present age of terror—coalesce into a brilliantly staged and observed portrait of personal and social disquiet. “Sieranevada” was directed by Cristi Puiu. The New York Film [ Read More ]

The post New York Film Festival 2016: Sieranevada Gets A New Clip appeared first on Shockya.com.

Beginning in 1937 — the opening credits take us through a series of period photos and alert us to expect something with a potentially greater scope than simply the biopic of one man — Scarred Hearts is still inspired by the life of one figure: writer and intellectual Max Blecher, in the case of this film reconfigured as Emanuel (Lucius Rus), suffering from bone tuberculosis and put in a hospital on the edge of the Black Sea. A 20-year-old man with his life ahead of him, there’s the belief within him that this is all to pass, though, as history will attest, that’s unfortunately not true.

Like another two-and-a-half-hour Romanian dry comedy about the medical process, Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Scarred Hearts plays up the control doctors hold over us in a critical state for maximum absurdity, of course the joke of antiquated health care emphasized in director Radu Jude’s case.

The 2016 New York Film Festival line-up has arrived, and as usual for the festival, it’s an amazing slate of films. Along with the previously announced The 13th, 20th Century Women, and The Lost City of Z, there’s two of our Sundance favorites, Manchester By the Sea and Certain Women, as well as the top films of Cannes: Elle, Paterson, Personal Shopper, Graduation, Julieta, I, Daniel Blake, Aquarius, Neruda, Sieranevada, Toni Erdmann, and Staying Vertical. As for other highlights, the latest films from Hong Sang-soo, Barry Jenkins, and Matías Piñeiro will also screen.

Check it out below, including our reviews where available.

The 13th (Opening Night, previously announced)

Directed by Ava DuVernay

USA, 2016

World Premiere

The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,...

It’s the conspiracies you don’t see that are the most frightening ones, and the presence of invisible enemies imbues the Slovenian thriller “Nightlife” (“Nocno zivljenje”) with a constant sense of dread. Director Damjan Kozole (“A Call Girl,” “Spare Parts”) doesn’t quite deliver the heft of similar films that have emerged from the recent Romanian New Wave — “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “Police, Adjective” both came to mind as I was watching — but he and editors Jurij Moskon and Ivo Trajkov keep the storytelling suspenseful. Criminal lawyer Milan (Jernej Sugman) has just succeeded in getting his client released.