Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

A detective tries to come to terms with himself, but the past refuses to let him.

Disguising his smuggling operation as humanitarian aid, Fane ventures into Ukraine to retrieve contraband cigarettes. His mission is complicated when a young refugee, Oleh, sneaks into his van with no way for them to understand each other.

What more understated, and yet more effective, ode to urbanization than Mesaroș’s film, which consists entirely from dynamic black&white photographs connected by a voice-over commentary written from the perspective of a naughty pre-teen boy who enjoys to the full the benefits of modernization? His village (Nehoiu, in Buzău county) is about to become a town; the boy writes a letter to his cousin from the capital, Bucharest, to tell him about his daily life. As in Red Flag, humour is a crucial element employed to smooth down the otherwise transparent political ‘message’ of the film: when the boy swallows a button, the mother takes him to the “new” hospital, where the doctors take an x-ray picture “to see if it’s from the shirt or the pants”; the machine is “so good” that they can clearly see what sort of button it is.

In 2032, while trying to control the weather for a virtual show around Seattle's Space Needle, a shift in reality occurs. Four characters unexpectedly cross paths...

After Ecaterina is left alone, she ends up in an orphanage, but after a new teacher is hired, she learns it's no ordinary one.

Antonia introduces Dragoș to her friends from her hometown. Each of them ends up getting bored in their own way.

The multitude of interwar villas in Timișoara is an integral part of the city's identity. Michael Wolf is one of the architects who actively participated in the transformation of the city landscape and paving the way to modern Timișoara.

In close proximity, through slow movements of the camera, the eye becomes an unknown organic planet floating in black space. The delicate double exposure does not disturb the clarity of its patient, strictly black-and-white gaze, which works its way through hairs and eyelashes, through pores and wrinkles, crevices, and craters.

Film is an exploration of a special universe: the annual vacation of a bunch of 70-year-old ladies. Far from men and the madness of daily life, Cica, Nana and their friends isolate themselves voluntarily in a villa in the countryside. Together they blend joie de vivre and memories, melancholia and joyfulness, gossip and jokes. All that to keep up the illusion that time has not passed, that they are still the same beautiful and attractive girls they were 50 years ago.

A road trip full of remorse, doubt and darkness. Starring Marina Voica, a Romanian pop singer.

Bertha Benz was a German automotive pioneer. In honor of International Women's Day in 2019, this biopic was released to highlight the journey of Bertha Benz

At a crossroads in a village, an old water pump stands as a testament to the passage of time.

Two lovers are kept away from each others during childhood because of a secret family recipe war between the two families. After they grow up they meet again and try to regain the recipe to make a new family restaurant work.

hóson zêis, phaínou; experimental tribute to glimpses of beauty

A metaforic look at the ages of man.

The film follows residents who refuse to abandon their homes despite shrinking communities, closed services, and growing isolation. Through intimate conversations, daily routines, and personal reflections, the documentary examines: • What it means to hold onto a disappearing way of life • The emotional cost of staying when others leave • The strength and identity tied to land, family history, and community • The quiet resilience of those who remain behind Rather than portraying rural life nostalgically, it presents a grounded, human portrait of individuals adapting to change while preserving dignity, belonging, and continuity in places slowly fading from the map.

“Cinema, Poetry, and Trains in Tîrgu Neamț” might serve as the subtitle for this film, which Copel Moscu composes in a deliberately atomised manner, capturing the rhythm of a small provincial town in late-1980s Romania: cinema as escapism, pouring rain à la George Bacovia, and a vague love story between a woman projectionist and a railwayman come one after the other over the course of this somewhat comical elegy, whose meanings do not achieve the poignant depths of Moscu’s other films.

A skeptical glance cast upon the Christian, pagan and scientific opinions on the supernatural. One has to decide which is right and which is wrong, if any. A film dedicated to the bad taste and naivety everywhere.

A parody of consumer society, Promo constructs a domestic utopia in which everyday life is overwhelmed by the rhetorical absurdity of advertising language.

Victoria is tired of living in the corporate world and all that it entails: rigid management, careless colleagues, and the impossibility of implementing her professional initiatives. When frustration reaches its highest level, and Victoria feels that exhaustion at work robs her of any joy in life, she decides to become a career counselor and help people change their bad habits and thinking. At the same time, she divorces her husband. The only being who always stays with her and whom she loves unconditionally is her cat, Mango. But her new job is not at all as expected.

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth”, Camus said. But lying is the seed of abuse. We create fiction to help us upgrade our past, replace it with something worthy. What is art if not an acceptable deception?

Dorin, a young man from the country, agrees for money, to take an exam for a Bachelor's Degree on behalf of someone else. He's got just one night to prepare and get in character, while facing social awkwardness and the absurdity of a flawed system.

Corrupt ex-communist politicians in 90s Romania rule the country, with younger politicians vying to take their place.

Corina, a 45 years old Romanian emigrant, works as a nurse taking care for William, an old man, former Nazi soldier in the WW2.

Disguising his smuggling operation as humanitarian aid, Fane ventures into Ukraine to retrieve contraband cigarettes. His mission is complicated when a young refugee, Oleh, sneaks into his van with no way for them to understand each other.

ate at night, a young food delivery man tries to find the address where he needs to deliver a shawarma. The man does not find the location, so he walks in circles talking to his vlog’s viewers.

Beyond the river lies a world where suffering, poverty, and violence define everyday life. The film doesn’t explain or judge - it listens. With no external narration, the community tells its own story - with pain, with humor, with dignity. An unforgiving mirror held up to a society that keeps what it doesn’t want to see at arm’s length.

In a quiet Bucharest suburb, Edith and Stan lead an unremarkable life – until Spiridon, the building handyman, stirs their routine with a startling revelation: their new neighbor, Anilov, breeds pigeons that are not what they seem. As Edith, a fervent believer in conspiracy theories, becomes increasingly obsessed, her imagination spirals out of control, blurring the lines between reality and paranoia. Meanwhile, Stan, a man of reason, struggles to anchor her in logic, navigating the growing conflict between belief and skepticism.

What more understated, and yet more effective, ode to urbanization than Mesaroș’s film, which consists entirely from dynamic black&white photographs connected by a voice-over commentary written from the perspective of a naughty pre-teen boy who enjoys to the full the benefits of modernization? His village (Nehoiu, in Buzău county) is about to become a town; the boy writes a letter to his cousin from the capital, Bucharest, to tell him about his daily life. As in Red Flag, humour is a crucial element employed to smooth down the otherwise transparent political ‘message’ of the film: when the boy swallows a button, the mother takes him to the “new” hospital, where the doctors take an x-ray picture “to see if it’s from the shirt or the pants”; the machine is “so good” that they can clearly see what sort of button it is.

In 2032, while trying to control the weather for a virtual show around Seattle's Space Needle, a shift in reality occurs. Four characters unexpectedly cross paths...

After Ecaterina is left alone, she ends up in an orphanage, but after a new teacher is hired, she learns it's no ordinary one.

Antonia introduces Dragoș to her friends from her hometown. Each of them ends up getting bored in their own way.

A ten year old granddaughter and her two grandmothers go to the seaside. It’s her first time in Romania. She doesn’t speak romanian, the grandmothers don’t speak english… Nor to each other.

The short documentary gives a glimpse into the life of one of the last very isolated and archaic settlements in the Romanian mountains. It is a portrait of a place where life has a different meaning and time has another pace. In a world that is more and more driven by fast gains by any means, the Hill and its people appear to be one of the last enclaves hidden from time, where man has still a deep connection to nature, his land and animals. Life is simple and rough, the land is imposing its own rules, but people preserve a sense of freedom and serenity almost forgotten by the modern man.

Vlad, 38, works as a tour guide on cruise ships. When he started work ten years ago, he left behind a failed relationship and a small child: Max, his son, who is now almost a teenager. Vlad happens to come back to Romania for a week and tries to connect with his son and make up for the lost time.

An experimental short done by Valentin Constantin in 1981, with Kinema Ikon.