Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

A woman needs to urgently drive her terminally ill father from a German clinic back to Romania. When at the border, she can’t go further.

The communists are taking over the boyar land and do the agrarian reform.

Neli (55) goes to Bucharest for a few days, while Dan, her 17 year old son is left home alone. On her return, her neighbor friends rush into welcoming her and delurking into the smallest detail, spicy aspects of the party that Dan organized in her absence. Soon after, Neli 's meeting with Dan creates a different perspective on what she thinks she knows about her friends from the block.

Short documentary about working-class Romanians.

Director Alexandra Bidian goes to Romania, the home country of her late father. She invites her mother and sister along to the land where they used to spend their summer holidays, but this time in search of memories. It is her attempt to address and voice things, and her means to understand the man who wrote a lot and spoke very little, and about whom much remains in the dark. When her father came to Germany, he already had a life behind him – including decades of political involvement, which was documented not only by him, but also by the Securitate, socialist Romania’s secret police. Bidian combs through old boxes, reads letters, and peruses files. But instead of answers, she is left with more questions. A road trip to the past, and a letter to her father. Using archival material, family pictures, and interviews with friends and associates, Bidian tries to track down who her father was – and how her own story is intertwined with his life and his actions, as well as with his losses.

Monk, the manager of a hotel in Cocos Island, throws bottles into the sea containing a fake treasure map of the island in an attempt to attract tourists.

She drives with him to buy booze for her birthday party. Also, he wants to buy her a present on their way, but he has no idea what that could be.

What's more important: friends or international fame? Smiley has one day to figure out the answer. An American talent scout is offering him a career in the United States, but on one condition: he has to quit his band, Simplu. The band members realize what's going on and they don't like it, which makes his decision even harder. Smiley's life gets even more complicated when he meets Mia, a mysterious girl with a passion for ballet and... tuned car races. Love at first sight is a great thing, but the clock is ticking and Smiley has to choose. Will Simplu be on the stage of the first block party in Romania at the end of the day? A dance-themed romantic comedy which reminds us that life would be much simpler if we didn't complicate it ourselves.

A married man has an affair with a much younger colleague. The two decide to celebrate her anniversary on a secluded island in the Danube Delta. From the moment they arrive, everything goes from bad to worse, without any logical explanation. After discovering that the only person who could take them back home is dead, the desperation to escape the island becomes uncontrollable, leading them to do unimaginable things to each other. Only one of them will leave the island in the end, answering the question that has haunted them since their arrival: Who else has been with them on the island all this time?

A son's letter to Santa for Christmas turns his father's evening into a thriller he did not ask for.

An experimental art animation.

One of the last movies made during the communist era in Romania. The plot : a drawing contest for kids in Bucharest. More important : this is a movie about childhood, creativity. Strange topics for a country that was about to fall apart. 50 minutes - by Elisabeta Bostan, who made great movies for kids in the 60's and 70's (such as Veronica).

Adriana, a 65-year-old woman, tries to live her life to the fullest, rediscovering her femininity and her desire to love. Her sons, Gabriel, a self-absorbed corporate man, and Andrei, a man on the verge of personal and professional failure, suddenly invade her life, each with their own crises. Gabriel juggles a tense marriage and extramarital temptations, and Andrei runs away from a broken relationship and professional failures. Three destinies collide under the same roof, in a carousel of comic situations, dramatic moments and intimate revelations. The three come to understand that family, with all its conflicts and absurdities, remains the only safe haven.

This is about the lives of three sisters during the second World War in Romania. Based on the homonymous play by Horia Lovinescu.

There is a place, a world, that film creates; somewhere between the harsh lines and light of reality, and the soft warm flickering of the projector. Many people enter. Some never return.

In the process of reconstructing the memory of her mother, a young woman relives the emotional ravine between them, originating in childhood.

A married man has an affair with a much younger colleague. The two decide to celebrate her anniversary on a secluded island in the Danube Delta. From the moment they arrive, everything goes from bad to worse, without any logical explanation. After discovering that the only person who could take them back home is dead, the desperation to escape the island becomes uncontrollable, leading them to do unimaginable things to each other. Only one of them will leave the island in the end, answering the question that has haunted them since their arrival: Who else has been with them on the island all this time?

The crow swallows the boy's blood of its beak. The boy has only one choice: run or face his fears.

Filmed in six countries during fifteen years , "The Last Transhumance" takes us into the world of shepherds who walk with their animals very long distances in search for food: an ancient way of life not compatible with the modern world.

Irina and Cata are moving in together for the first time. This big step sparks a heated debate on Irina's unwillingness to expose their relationship to her parents and to the rest of the world. She is trying her best to make her girlfriend happy.

A Romany woman travels from Praha to her home in Transylvania

A psychological movie about the life of three sisters in a Romanian village.

In 1942, Nea' Vitu is in trouble with his children: a son is fascinated by the world of war profiteers, and the daughter is going around with the speculator "Treispemii" (Dan Nutu). On the evening of her engagement, Vitu is denounced by his son for hiding an illegal printing press in a painter's house. Thirty years later, he returns to the slum and searches for the Vitu family. They no longer live there, the neighbors have changed, and he investigates to find out what happened to them. Nea Vițu, you raise your daughter, Rădița, and son Fănică. His wife Dorina died when Fănică was born. Apparently, family problems are difficult barriers to overcome. He's an honest man. He gets angry at the slick Fănică. Fănică is also chased away by the slum priest, because he wanted to make a new bible... where he'd be Fănică the God .... Rădița goes around with the speculator "Treispemii". In 1942, nea Vițu joins the fight against the Nazis and runs an illegal printing house with a painter...

Adaptation based on the sketch "Doi vecini" by Tudor Arghezi.

Consists of a series of glimpses from the life of a Gabi, a Romanian mother adrift in a rootless urban landscape. The film follows her for nearly two days as she tries to free herself from her surroundings.

A filmmaker starts following the story of a man who is fighting a lone, harrowing battle against a Kafkaesque system that refuses to recognize he is alive. As her camera rolls and days turn into weeks, she becomes dangerously enmeshed in his journey. But the story behind the story is much darker and sadder than she could have imagined.

Horia Colibasanu is a dentist, father of two boys and elite climber. In 2008, he refused to abandon, at 7400 meters on the Annapurna, his sick companion, the Basque mountaineer Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, implanted his own life in danger. His action dazzled the climbing community. Despite this tragic incident, he continued to climb in pure alpine style, without supplemental oxygen. In 2017, the 40-year-old Romanian athlete will return to Everest, after two unsuccessful attempts. For the first time, Horia is attempting a solo ascent.

An emotional rollercoaster journey within the music and the social transformations of the last 50 years in Romania, seen through the eyes of a famous DJ during communist times.

Romanian fairy tales usually start with the sentence: “Once upon a time something happened, if it hadn’t happened it couldn’t be told.” In this fairy tale, a stranger visits the remote mountain village of Slon.

Punish: a reading of parts of a novel in which a military officer gives a clinical, amoral account about his role in the violent oppression of revolutionaries in 1848. Discipline: a collection of photographs of a chubby and harmless soldier at home and at work from the 1950s to the 70s.

During the peasant uprising of 1888, Alecu Dumitru, a socialist, hides from police in the Nada Florilor island, next to a fishing village.

A telling of the classic tale about a foot race between a hare and a tortoise.

What starts out as a good night's sleep throws us into a storm of dreams and nightmares that begs for our attention and refuses to tell us when it's going to be over, making us the protagonist in the mind's hidden playground, the subconscious.

In order to obtain a title, Iordache, recently becoming wealthy, marries his daughter with a noble on hard times, Ștefan. On his way to Iordache's estate, he stops an Mânjoalâ's inn, where he discovers a mysterious world and falls for the innkeeper. Based on Caragiale's novel, "La Hanul lui Mânjoală”. Last film role for Gina Patrichi.

A group of students from an architectural institute, instead of going to the mountains, accidentally end up in a vacation home by the sea. Here, after a series of amusing adventures, they successfully perform with their amateur variety orchestra.

The story follows a renowned detective reverting from retirement to resolve one final case, a personal case of great complexity.

While on his way for a business meeting, Tudor is having an unexpected 30 minutes break, because of the impossible traffic. He’s got enough time to have a coffee, to talk a little about his beloved little girl and to take a picture.

Bogdan, a teenager with communication problems, is forced out of his comfort zone when his older brother takes him to a party.

They are patients in a psychiatric hospital in Romania and marginalized persons whose social status has been removed. You think they will only say crazy things, but you don't want them to be like ordinary people, be good, love, and even create often... It's just that all this is confined to the hospital wall. The title is a gimmick, just one sentence from a song sung by the patient in the film.

A documentary covering the Rebellion of Brașov, from November 15, 1987.

A boy learning to write imagines letters becoming birds and numbers turning into trees.

A deaf woman tries to reconnect with her rock star son after abandoning him 35 years ago, while she goes to his concert she has to face her fears and a world who doesn't understand her.

Chronicling a day in the life of a rather solitary woman as she has to part from her much-younger lover, this film is a study in the art of non-verbal communication and the uselessness of words in the face of the inevitable.

A 92-year-old man, having outlived major historical events such as war, peace, communism, the revolution and post-revolution, opens up about his life and old age.

A judge falls in love with a married woman.

Sunday afternoon. 42 Celsius degrees. Nothing to eat. No shops. A man in his 50s tries to survive.

After a chance meeting, a boy and a girl travel through the wild Romanian landscape on a rickety motorbike.

Lara and her ailing father nurse an injured seagull that Lara has found in her backyard. But this is merely a convenient distraction for father and daughter from discussing the topic of death.

Răducu, a little boy, spent most of his time in the mountains with his grandparents. But now he has to go back to his parents in the city and join a kindergarten.

Two couriers from a camp show up to communicate with the communists, when there should be only one. Which one is the impersonator sent by Germans?