Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

After a water pipe incident a young couple receives an unexpected visit from their older neighbors. Things get heated and cause the smoldering problems of the couple to come out.

Inspired by Derek Jarman’s Section 28 installation, the film compares stories from a recent history of the Romanian queer community with current personal experiences, linking them to lyrical observations about a still hidden present.

A few years before Kubrick in "2001", although in a more farcical way, Ion Popescu-Gopo shows the evolution of a strange creature named man from the time he started to rub flint stones to nowadays when he has managed to split the atoms.

Two brothers, trying to make sense of a world gripped by a pandemic, grasp at anything to increase their chances of survival.

The story of a young man who only begins to live after he dies. The main hero is given the chance to live one last 365 days. This is how he discovers God and true values.

Laur asks the owners’ association in the building he lives in to fix the elevator for his pregnant girlfriend. Throughout the meeting, we witness an absurd world, which imposes its own rules, outside of all that is humane and logical.

A filmmaker from Moldova tries to discover the truth about Soviet experiments in atomic gardening.

A boy is to become a sheep herder far out in the Rumanian countryside. But when one of the sheep disappear, his whole existence and life is in danger.

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.

Damian and Alex are perfect people, with jobs, cars and a healthy diet. However they try to deal with obsession: one for people-watching, one for each other.

Calin Surupaceanu is a simple boy, convinced by the engineer Dan to accompany him in building a new city. Along the way, he meets his future wife and subsequently source of unrest and rebellion against fate. The movie is based on a novel by Marin Preda called "The Intruder".

After a play of the same name by Gheorghe Ciprian.

Puiul is a short animated art Romanian movie without dialogue.

Lovebirds Radu and Mădălina are taking a trip together to her parents'. On the way, they pick up a hitchhiker, who becomes their friend.

A compassionate portrait of a lonely old man’s attempt to reconnect with his estranged family is transformed into an investigative cinema verité procedural.

Arsenie Boca, a priest, theologian, and mystic persecuted by the communist regime, is considered holy by many believers, although he has yet to be canonized.

A playful representation of the snobbery of communist middle class parents, for whom grades are more important than the real interest in their children's needs and curiosities.

The story of a young man who only begins to live after he dies. The main hero is given the chance to live one last 365 days. This is how he discovers God and true values.

Laur asks the owners’ association in the building he lives in to fix the elevator for his pregnant girlfriend. Throughout the meeting, we witness an absurd world, which imposes its own rules, outside of all that is humane and logical.

A filmmaker from Moldova tries to discover the truth about Soviet experiments in atomic gardening.

A boy is to become a sheep herder far out in the Rumanian countryside. But when one of the sheep disappear, his whole existence and life is in danger.

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.

Damian and Alex are perfect people, with jobs, cars and a healthy diet. However they try to deal with obsession: one for people-watching, one for each other.

Puiul is a short animated art Romanian movie without dialogue.

A journalist in a Bucharest publication, is the accidental witness of the street arrest of a communist. It intervenes in the defense of the young man, who manages to escape, and is arrested. He is obliged to look for the missing woman.

42-year-old Elena has big dreams. The beating heart of her remote Moldovan village, she organises community clean-ups, supports lonely elders, and each year dons a Santa Claus costume to bring joy to her neighbours. But beneath the suit, Elena is driven by ambition and a desire to shake things up. Her dream? To become mayor.

Arsenie Boca, a priest, theologian, and mystic persecuted by the communist regime, is considered holy by many believers, although he has yet to be canonized.

Two railroad men are living in a lineman's cabin. One night a stranger has an accident on the beach nearby that will change everything.

A study of the underground music scene in the former Eastern Bloc city of Timisoara, Romania, in the first decade following the fall of the Communist regime.

A man followed by mistake by a mysterious gang revisits, while on the run, important moments and people from his life up to that moment.

A group of men share a small space in a prison metal workshop in Botosani, Romania. When they’re not working, they animatedly discuss religion and hypocrisy, lament during tea that they don’t have onions for sausage, or joke and sing.

Living a constant adolescent drama with the monster in her head, a young girl embarks on a spiritual journey in order to make peace with herself and with the ones around her.

This film is about the changes in the countryside happening in Romania around 1945, when am agrarian reform happens.

The film didactically exemplifies a few police and coroner procedures, from gathering clues at a crime scene to doing autopsies.

In 1942, three Jewish teenagers were executed in Bucharest. They were accused of distributing banknotes with anti-fascist slogans: «Down with Hitler! Down with Antonescu!» Ten years later, the mother of one of them writes a letter to the Romanian Communist Party in an attempt to clear her son's name. He was not even allowed to say goodbye to his family. Stylized in a retro black-and-white aesthetic, the film by the renowned Romanian director Andreea Vălean presents a monologue by the mother (portrayed by Katia Pascariu). Desperately trying to find the right words, she recounts the story of the cruel murder of innocent young boys, captured on camera.

In 1992, the retired astronaut commander William Florescu relocates on shores of the Black Sea, where he revisits his spatial experience from January 1962, when he took part to the manned pioneer U.S. "Genesis 1491" Space Mission.

A young mother raises her son alone, supporting him by working at the village pub. The tender and close relationship between the two largely compensates for the fact that they have difficulty managing money, and Andrei tries at every opportunity to cheer up his mother. In the absence of his father, the boy idealizes any male figure who comes into contact with his mother, be it the pub owner Ilie or the policeman Gică.

An unconventional chronicle of the literary and artistic Romanian avant-garde. The film recreates the atmosphere of those frenzied years (1916-1947) in the spirit of the avant-garde, through a bewildering collage of fundamental texts and images.

A tribute to Jonas Mekas

F. has been living in Bucharest for four years since fleeing Afghanistan with her family. The thoughtful 18-year-old films her life in the Romanian capital: her trips to the park, life at home with her brothers and sisters, and the conversations she has with her Romanian friends. When the Covid-19 pandemic approaches, bringing a lockdown, she has to spend a month indoors. She kills time with funny observations of life outdoors, filmed through the window.

An asexual, bi-romantic Wiccan girl falls in love with an asexual aromantic boy and tries to make him feel the magic of love.

On the outskirts of an industrial city, a lonely man lives an uneventful life. One day, a stranger appears and apparently nothing changes but at the same time, nothing is the same.

Student film made by Cristian Mungiu.

A short animated film pursuing a metaphoric, “cosmic romanticism”.

Hervé, a wealthy and confident Parisian, finds himself lost in the middle of a small Romanian village. While he imagines himself returning quickly to Paris, the return paths will shake his illusions.

Marilena a 40 yo Woman lives her life at maximum. She works in a furniture factory where she is sexually harassed by his boss. At home she has a new born child with the husband of her bet friend. Her lover is in Canada and he have no idea about the existence of the child. When he returns from Canada life of Marilena becomes a nightmare.

A playful representation of the snobbery of communist middle class parents, for whom grades are more important than the real interest in their children's needs and curiosities.

The story of a young man who only begins to live after he dies. The main hero is given the chance to live one last 365 days. This is how he discovers God and true values.

Laur asks the owners’ association in the building he lives in to fix the elevator for his pregnant girlfriend. Throughout the meeting, we witness an absurd world, which imposes its own rules, outside of all that is humane and logical.

A filmmaker from Moldova tries to discover the truth about Soviet experiments in atomic gardening.

A boy is to become a sheep herder far out in the Rumanian countryside. But when one of the sheep disappear, his whole existence and life is in danger.