Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

An animation about a duck who doesn't listen.

Getchoo debut their album "WILL" in Control Club, October 11th 2024.

A small part of Ion Tarara's photographic archive is put in sentimental order by his daughter, on which occasion she rethinks the poetics of archivism.

The film tells the story of one of the oldest circus families in Romania, descendants of the Globus Circus founder, Toma Zdebschi. Mina and Carol have been married for 55 years. They were both circus artists. Mina is 75 and Carol is 84.

The film is part of a series of scientific venatorial touristic films produced in 1930 și describes the process of extracting and transforming gold in the Apuseni Mountains.

Once married to the same man, two women in their seventies must forget the past and work together to look after an empty, snowbound village for the whole winter.

Katherine, who survived the Holocaust at age seven, visits her fatherland of Transylvania, Romania for the first time departing from Sweden with her family. Not only do both happy and frightful memories of her forgotten past come to life, but she must also face the depressing reality of Ceausescu's communist dictatorship and the romance developing between her husband and her sister. Parallel to her story and simultaneously, we get to know her childhood love and friend Sandor, who serves the dictator as a forester and whose story has a tragic ending. The film ends with the surprising and odd encounter of the two stories.

Documentary about the fall of the old city of Orșova due to the construction of the Iron Gates hydroelectric power station.

A boy sees his ex-girlfriend after retracing the route of their first trip together.

What happens when a documentary film breaks out of its comfort zone and openly provokes the society? To what extent my compatriots are willing to reflect on one particular episode, the reprisals in Odessa from October 1941?

Arsenie Boca (1910 - 1989) was a Romanian Orthodox monk, theologian and artist. He was persecuted by the Communists and named among the 100 greatest Romanians.

A bizarre mixture of unmasked propaganda for the apparent success of the collectivization process in Moldova with a fresh approach, sometimes extremely exciting, from a formal and narrative point of view.

While a gruff inspector mentors a new hire, he flips their usual routine when he investigates a monk with a link to a fatal incident from years ago.

A collection of 6 films made during the lockdown period in Romania.

Experimental film on 16mm by Ioan T. Morar as part of Kinema Ikon.

In a shady restaurant, the waiters are selected based on the incurable disease that each has. They server an affluent clientele. A young woman shows up that changes everything.

In a forest near Catina in the Romanian countryside, things get out of hand as Aurel and Nicu?or fail to comply with officer Sergiu Câmpan's standards of co-operation. Before the break of dawn, Aurel will become a man.

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.

An old man tries to spend two last days with his granddaughter, before they would be separated.

" Advertisement film for video games made by CENTROCOOP. "

After being brutally murdered, a teenage girl comes back as a zombie and plots a revenge on her killers.

Elena Stoica, a resident doctor at a hospital, faces a silent enemy: tuberculosis. With the healthcare system in ruins and no real hope for treatment, Elena devises a dangerous lie, a fictitious trip to a medical congress in Paris.

The beginning of the war in Ukraine, Bucharest North Station. A young translator shelters two young Ukrainian mothers with two children for a few days.

Recently laid off and desperate for cash to take his girlfriend out, Vlad stumbles upon an unexpected way to make quick money thanks to a new recycling program.

Two characters separated by a deep gulf strive to build a solid bridge between the two sides.

The director’s observational camera enters the home of a family living in a village in the Danube Delta, where the birth of another girl arouses more tension stemming from the uneasy life of the extended family. In her short film, the director thematises a conflict between generations of three women reliant on each other, while Maria, a ten-year-old girl who has to take care of her younger sisters, comes into focus. In the timelessness of traditional rural relationships, shown in a slow pace of everyday life, Maria’s childlike innocence is exposed to harsh orders of her grandmother who requires respect and proper conduct.

A fish dreams of a relationship.

You say my poems are poetry? They're not. Yet if you understand they're not, - Then you see the poetry of them! Radu Jude’s desktop film, in which director considers Andy Warhol’s celebrity immortality with live footage of the artist’s grave in Pittsburgh.

Theory and practice meet with the sound of reality.

A team of 3 astronauts carries a city on their spaceship

'Incurable' is what Romanian call them. They speak about 'the wrong side'. In this short film we follow a young man, fighting against this major taboo.

Romanian documentary about the Struma disaster in 1942.

Aribelle (Ari) is an amnesiac teenage girl stranded in a dangerous metropolis, Lost City, with only the clothes on her back and a heart-shaped locket. She meets Hugo, a very resourceful orphan kid who becomes her best friend. In a rather amusing situation Ari borrows the name Lara because he can't remember her real name. The action takes place in two cities, Capital City and Lost City, before the accident and after the accident in which Lara loses her memory and ends up in Lost City. The two, Lara and Hugo go through all sorts of adventures and end up at the city orphanage. Fausta, the director of the orphanage, is truly evil and has her own plans for Lara and Hugo.

Short film by Romanian director.

The story of two women, who had to reinvent and recalibrate themselves for others in order to escape poverty and reach their goals. In the end, both seem to get what they want, but the erotic chat industry took its toll on one of them.

A teenager, Andrei, is madly in love with his neighbour, Monica. He calls a hotline for tips about art of seduction.

After he kills his beloved wife, Puiu Faranga is helped by his father to fake insanity.

Investigation into the death of a modest cashier.

Paul (23) and Radu (53) are a couple in crisis. They are visited every day in their home by a small film crew. Together with the filmmaker, they go through a “deconstruction of memory” process, via procedures such as intimate video diaries, exercises inspired from family constellations, re-enactments of key memories and dreams, in an attempt to make sense of their explosive relationship.

Love 2. America tells the story of the final 24 hours of the romance of two lovers, Anton (30) and Beatrice (34). After 24 hours, Anton is going to leave, forever, to a place far away where he will start a new life; Beatrice will return to David (32), her husband. Entwined with memories, dreams and thoughts of the future, their story slowly departs from reality and becomes the universal story of two lovers at the end of their love.

Through the lens of social media, Elena shares her daily life struggles and her family’s challenges.

Marian Crișan's film presents the actions of a "young and restless" woman, set out to avenge her lover's infidelity.

Tibi Ușeriu, Corneliu Buliga, Eva Hochbauer, Toma Coconea and five more ultra runners set off from the North of the country towards the Danube, on Via Transilvanica, the longest and most beautiful uninterrupted trail from Romania, recently landscaped. 1.400 kilometers, over 30.000 m. elevation difference, in 24 days. A lot is going to happen between these two milestones which embrace a whole country (Putna-Drobeta) and ten reasons a day to abandon: the threat of bears and sheepdogs, getting lost in the night, endless races under the sun and rain, until the skin peels off, the nails fall, just like all the masks, eventually. No runner is a granted finalist. They all know that suffering is inevitable.

After moving to Bucharest, Sânziana reflects on how this change has affected her perception of herself and her body.

From the apartment where he lives, an old man stalks his middle aged neighbor: stalking her through the window, hearing her through the thin walls of the apartment building, spying on her through the bathroom vent when she takes a shower or during a casual sex game. His meticulously organized voyeuristic fantasies are disrupted when the show in the neighboring bathroom takes a morbid turn.

Experimental animation film, with a visual focus on geometrical shapes and straight lines

An anthropological study of a small community in Sfântu Gheorghe, where the songs performed by the local choir are an important tradition. We see them singing as members of the choir and understand how their music becomes a bond of the community, present in moments of joy and sadness, at weddings and baptisms, but also at war.

Four friends aim to make a movie. With very little experience and a lot of enthusiasm, they go through a series of adventures: burning cars, film studios, strange hotels and more.

32 year old female boxer Steluta Duta tries to buy her own home by winning boxing match after boxing match only to find her life is a continuous loop. As she trains for her European Boxing Cup, Stela revisits the past dramas of being an abandoned, institutionalized child.

Short documentary about Nicolae Ceaușescu's decision to prematurely halt the retrofitting and repair of buildings in Bucharest after the earthquake in 1977. Based on the official transcript of the meeting that took place on the 4th of July 1977 - 4 months after the earthquake had happened.

A woman gives shape to octopuses out of her own flesh. When she runs out of matter, she has to face what she has created.

A young snail grapples with the world's bewildering chaos and the enigma of their own body. Thrust into a quest for personal discovery, they must unlock the truth about their sexual identity through a bizarre and unexpected confrontation with their other half.

Maria, a 48-year-old woman, is trapped between two worlds—one guided by asceticism, the other fuelled by the need to reconnect and be with her two sons. Through carefully composed shots and minimalistic sound, we glimpse into her everyday life, thoughts, and emotions.

In this prequel, we follow the emotional downfall of Dragoș, a young boy navigating the tumultuous emotions brought on by his parents' divorce. As he grapples with his ever growing feelings of anger, sadness and loneliness, Dragoș will soon come face to face with a "being" that will put his faith to the test. This short film delves into the depths of a child's heart and mind, exploring how faith, whether weak or strong, still can't pull him from the darkness.