Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

In a poverty stricken village in 1947 Moldavia, the obsession for getting rich of Prisac turns the community against him. Based on "La Răzeși" (Yeomans) novel by Valeriu Emil Galan.

This film is a puzzle, which fits together in many different ways, only one of which is right. And all of which are deadly.

Four friends dream of owning a fishing pond but lack the money.A mobster lends them EUR30,000 and Vio loses it.Desperate, they turn to Vio's rich brother-in-law, but their efforts create chaos.In the end, friendship help them save the day.

An aged woman is taking a bath. While entering the water a new world reveals. The phone, on a chair, connects her with her son and keeps her linked to the world.

Luca (20) seduces girls then leaves them in the hands of his friends at the Black Sea port of Constanta. Luca falls in love with Veli, one of his potential victims. It's summer down the Danube river, in Harsova. The music is loud, the cars are fancy, the girls are tanned and Veli runs away from home in Luca's bed. First love has never felt more dangerous.

Biography of Aurel Vlaicu, a world wide aviation pioneer.

In 1475 when Stephen the Great, ruler of Moldavia is facing an invading Ottoman army of 120 000 men, the fate of Christian Europe largely depends on the battle's outcome.

Kyoko, a young Japanese girl training to become a professional mermaid, is saved by her coach's mouth-to-mouth "kiss of life". Desire awakens within her, she finds her mermaid voice and discovers the devastating effects of her singing, which will lead her to face the other side of the world.

Natalia and Ginel leave their small Romanian Danube village to work abroad in Rotterdam. One evening, when she is assaulted after meeting a local, Natalia asks Ita, a friend from home turned into a crook, to help her.

After two years spent as a student in Boston, a 22-year-old visits his native Moldova. It is April 2009. People gather in the streets of Chisinau, the call having spread through social networking sites. They are demonstrating against the communist authorities who falsified the election results. They seize and plunder the parliament and presidential buildings. The demonstrators carry away documents, furniture and office equipment. Our protagonist is coming from a friend's home carrying his own computer monitor. He is mistaken for a demonstrator, brutally beaten up by the police and taken to the police station. His interrogator is an experienced major. The authorities can do anything. Based on real events, the film asks questions about freedom, justice and the price of human life.

An exploration of the biggest camming studio in Romania, inquiring on its business model, on the thoughts of the people involved, and exposing the scale of its operation.

During the Second World War, a fascist warden takes over a prison in Romania and plans to kill communist prisoners under the pretext of attempted escape during their forced transfer to another penitentiary.

A petite Romanian gymnast trains with her teammates for what she hopes will be Olympic perfection.

The last part of the triptych dedicated to the outlaw Șaptecai and episode 6 of the Outlaws series. In the Week of Fools, Anghel's band exchanges Lady Ralu's dowry for arms for Tudor of Vladimiri's army, which they decide to join. Although captured by Mamoulos and savagely tortured by his men, Șaptecai escapes from the dungeon and goes on his way. With the help of Anița, the Răspopitul, Parpanghel and other fellow outlaws, Anghel finally sees his dream come true.

The last days of the first Romanian king, Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and the tough decisions he had to make in the summer of 1914 in order to please both Romanian Parliament and his relatives from the German Empire.

An untalented writer’s attempts to craft a “lifelike” screenplay result in a run-of-the-mill policier.

Victor, an incisive journalist, discovers a series of irregularities in a State farming enterprise. His investigations will unmask the fraud committed by the person in charge of the wine section, called Bachus. Although aided by an impressive number of cronies, Bachus will not be able to hide forever infamous secret.

An advanced spaceship called Delta is created to establish dialogue between intergalactic civilizations. Soon after an alien journalist boards the ship, she and the captain realize the AI that controls the ship can act on its own.

Alina and her husband Peter, had lost his son in a car accident. They came to Moldova, Alina place of birth, trying to adopt a child. Păvălaş reminds him of his lost son. Irina fled from Italy and returned to find the child. She meets her friend, Tatiana, and together they go in search of Păvălaş.

Mott the angel is sent on a holy mission in London and Bucharest. In his search for a mysterious saint, he encounters a world that sends him off course and forces him to face his true identity.

This is Emil’s story, the man who doesn’t believe in ghosts, and his best friend, Titi. The plot unfolds in a remote hamlet, a place looking like a slice of heaven. However, the story begins at the 40-day memorial service for Smaranda, the late wife of Emil. Days pass by, and Emil realizes that Titi looks like his days are numbered. He wants to brighten him up, but nothing helps. That’s because 40 days after her death, Smaranda moves into Titi’s house and starts haunting him.

Andrei, a 13 year old teenager, living on Bucharest outskirts, decides one day to steal a trolleybus in order to impress Marilena, a prostitute he fell in love with.

While working in Europe, Avram comes to realize that Italians are paying good money for trained dogs that can protect them from the waves of immigrants. That's Avram's big-time idea: he returns to Romania to start breeding watch dogs which he can later export to Italy. As it happens, he settles next to a camp of immigrants recently sent back from Rome. Thus, the Italian tension is willy-nilly reenacted on the banks of the Danube. Avram's life gets complicated. He starts having an affair with his own daughter in law, lands in conflict with his ex-immigrant neighbors and his life is literally under threat. The film ends with an unpredictable situation.

In the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian Mountains a woman is traveling with a small boy in a horse and cart, looking to punish those who once abused her. For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Órban serves as a living reminder.

In a cemetery in the city she has just arrived in by night train, a woman discovers that a man (probably her father) had recently been exhumed by the owners due to late payment. In desperation, she cremates his remains and moves on, to an unknown address where she accidentally meets a former lover from her youth. After a few drinks together, deep-seated wounds begin to surface, and the idealistic romanticism of early youth is replaced by the realization that life has not been kind to either of them.

The love story of two students in the tenth grade. Mihai is a provincial who reached in a Bucharest high school where his passion for philosophy and mathematics will be eclipsed by love and Dana is a chess enthusiast. Their romance is full of naturalness, but will go through many trials.

When a child steals candles from the cemetery, in order to provide some light means for his family sheltered into a damp basement of a block of flats, this circumstance can say a lot about the sufferance imposed by transition period of time in Romania. This child is one of the seven that Maria has got. She is a 33 years old ordinary woman, whose husband (Ion) is unemployed and has become a drunkard and violently acting, maybe because of his despairing and lack of prospective.

Secluded from the world, a single mother of three has to defend that what's left of her family, at all cost, from a cold blooded killer. Based on one of the best known Romanian fairy tales (The Goat and Her Three Kids by Ion Creanga), this short film aims to unveil the true nature of the famed bed time story and to treat the audience to a different perspective, one that offers a glimpse at what the tragedy actually looks like beyond the happy songs and colorful characters.

The relationship between a younger painter and an older woman.

In communist Romania in the 1980s the population collectively watches "Dallas", their only window into capitalism. Inspired by the US TV show, a young woman decides to emigrate to America. "Hotel Dallas" mixes documentary scenes with staged and experimental sequences.

The movie is based on a true story from the end of WWI, in Transylvania. A nobleman who owned some land in Transylvania returns home to find a part of his fortune burned to ashes during late 1918 when power was trasfered from AustroHungary to Romania. Looking for revenge, he ordered the killing of innocent Romanian peasants from a neighbouring village, which he suspected to be guilty for the losses he suffered. A Romanian officer from Romanian Transylvanian Volunteers Corp, decides to help the villagers to face the menace of the nobleman

"The Apples" (1955) is the graduation film of two of the most important directors of the following decades, Iulian Mihu and Manole Marcus, and shows a young couple mocked by a nobleman because they had stolen some apples from his estate.

M is writing a story about himself being cursed by his friend during a game of checkers. Soon he becomes confused with what is real and what is fiction.

Radu lives a solitary, sterile life. A promising job interview seems to give him a chance of breaking free from depression, but after some medical tests required by the company, he finds out that he only has a few more months left to live.

Sending love letters can't be easy when the writer you like never writes back.

The sitcom "Fast Food" presents the adventures of six handsome and humorous young people, employed in a fast-food restaurant in a mall, who experience their age-specific problems. The filming takes place in a real mall on a smaller scale, an impressive setting with real stores. The soundtrack is signed by Adi Ordean and is performed by the girls from the former band A.S.I.A. The series' script was written by Marius Serbu and Sorin Tofan, and directed by Claudiu Peruşco.

A night in the life of a 24-hour ‘Non-Stop’ store located in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. Four people lead different stories connected by a key character, Achim, the owner of the Non-Stop.

When her parents won't stop arguing, Robin goes out into the woods and meets a little planet that has been hurt. She brings it home but just like little girls don't like it when their parents argue, little planets don't like living in garages.

When his credit card has just been swallowed by distributor Bruno Lussac, State Inspector Débé crosses the limits of home ethics when he learns that he has just been banned from banking. Disguised as a Southerner for a costume party where he was supposed to arrest drug dealers, he lures his colleagues into robbing a bank; he causes a bloodbath but comes out victorious of this heist. For his accomplices, the informant, and pretty peacekeeper Cécile Barko, known as Cyborg, this is the start of a crazy run.

Constructed in the tone of a tragicomedy, the film, through the realistic situations it presents, excludes parody of any kind and leaves room for lyricism and humor. It also brings before the audience a story that will appear to us as something indifferent to the society in which it takes place, indifferent to the political and social, depending exclusively on the state of the individual himself. The double ecstasy has found a novel form of expression, the only undeniable fact. It was realized when Ion Iliescu was still "posing" as president of the country.

A couple who've just split up each attempt suicide.

The Iron Guard, also known as Legion of Archangel Michael, was a Romanian nationalist and patriotic movement of extreme right; as such, after it rose to power, it supported Nazi Germany and started a fierce campaign of retaliation against its political enemies. As such, in the night of November 26-27, 1940, the Death Teams executed forty political prisoners in the Jilava prison (in the movie, named "Viraga"), and next day, other two Teams arrested and shot the former minister Virgil Madgearu and the world famous historian Nicolae Iorga. To squash down the political outcry, the Police Prefect Stefan Zävoianu conveniently assigns the cases to a commissioner from the "Morals Division" (prostitution, thieves), Tudor Moldovan, hoping that he will fail to get to the bottom of the case. However, Moldovan has communist sympathies, so he quickly comes under the influence of the Bolshevik Pîrvu, who had escaped during the Viraga...

A more experimental aproach to labor protection films. In the line of Săucan's style, the soundtrack is as important as the image, the threatening music, full of shrillness, composed by Ion Dumitrescu potentiating the visual construction that mixes - in a montage reminiscent of the Soviet avant-garde school of the 1920s - all kinds of shooting techniques and frame combinations.

Romania had it rough under its last communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and things are even rougher now. Before, their problems were oppression and poverty. Now, their problem is mostly poverty - and plenty of it. In this grim comedy (to call it a black comedy would be to paint too perky a picture of it), Vasile (Gheorghe Dinica)has a wife whom he's fond of, and a mistress, whom he's fonder of. He manages a nearly abandoned movie theater, and makes just about nothing doing it. When his wife announces she's pregnant, he nearly goes frantic trying to find money to get her an abortion. However, what truly sends him over the edge is when his mistress decides to become a prostitute because, after all, the money is good. These two situations send him straight to the loony bin, and when he gets out, he discovers that his wife has rented their apartment to pornographic filmmakers, and guess who's starring in them?

Based on Nicole Valery-Grossu's European best seller autobiographic novel "Bless you, prison", the film is a true story, with real events and characters. A young intellectual woman, Nicole is arrested. There follow three months of exhausting interrogation and isolation. Alone in a cell, she undergoes a spiritual experience similar to that of the great mystics.

In the heart of the Danube Delta, superstition and religion are mixed together, like the earth and water that make up the mysterious mud from Tekir’s area, not far away. Chased away from her village because of her mysterious pregnancy, Mara finds herself employed at the Europa Hotel, providing treatment for infertile women using this miraculous mud. As she meets the rich and eccentric Mrs. Lili, Mara questions her beliefs and intuitions. The relationship between the two women is the key of the miracle of Tekir, between magic and power, tradition and modernity.

Matilda takes a one-day release from jail to attend her mother’s funeral, with no intention of returning. The clock is ticking as Matilda tries one last time to get help from her family and is forced to confront her troubled past.

It's year 0 of the pandemic. A young Roma father, Zoro, accompanied by his loyal companion, the horse Miguel, embarks on a transformative journey to the city to meet his newborn son for the very first time. In the challenges encountered on his way, his only weapons are his phone and the love he holds for his son.

Studies on human pathological locomotion.

During a night shift, an emergency ambulance with a team of three, a doctor, a paramedic and a driver, is called to an old man's apartment. The event will change their lives forever.

The grim realities of daily life in post-Communist Romania are described in this dark drama, which was filmed on-location in the poorer areas of Bucharest. Pepe & Fifi are brother and sister. Pepe is a struggling boxer, and Fifi is a barfly addicted to Bucharest's sleazy night life. This movie chronicles their daily lives while commenting upon the political and economic situation in Romania.

Three mice regularly clash with a group of cats. One day, Eye Patch the cat hurls a book at them. The mice see it is Alexandre Dumas' "Three Musketeers" and after reading it decide to imitate the exploits and adventures of the famous trio.

The struggle to convince the peasants to join the collective farm in Romania 60s.

In 1877 during the Russo-Turkish war the Kingdom of Romania joins the war on Russia's side and declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

A bunch of young people, more or less hippies, waste time at the cinema with a dull film. On-screen, a man lies on the railway and awaits his end. But at some point the screen and reality become the same. Edited without dialogue, with songs by the Velvet Underground and Nico in the background, this is a portrait of the young generation of actors of the moment.

A copilot takes control of the aircraft due to the fact that the captain has taken some risky decisions. This will degenerate into an ugly conflict.

Dumitru is a two-faceted killer: he kills animals and called a hunter, and kills people, and branded as an assassin. Dumitru is just out of prison, for the first time since the fall of communism. Even on the train taking him home, he is planning to return to his past practices as he is involved in a blood thirsty card game with some gypsies. The game turns out badly, and one of those making up the table is killed. He starts on a flight again, this time, bound for his home town, where he finds his wife pregnant by his own brother. Blind with a thirst for vengeance, Dumitru commits one more murder that unleashes a sequence of new crimes and makes him into a wanted serial killer. Life becomes a burden that is too heavy for Dumitru who decides to abbreviate his existence. However, he soon discovers he does not hold all power over himself. God has other plans for him and condemns to him to stay alive. Written by Gonz30

Love, sex and psychedelic rhythms. In an isolated mountain cabin, four couples rediscover their relationship. They only have one weekend to find a happy ending.

An epic love story set during the troubled moments of Romanian history that culminate in the Great Union of Alba Iulia.

Seeking shelter in her work from the pain of a breakup, Lena, a painter turning 40, is commissioned to decorate a brutalist luxury hotel nestled in the depths of the Romanian forest. There, where the Danube ends its course in seemingly miraculous springs, Lena’s moral views are confronted with an overwhelmingly corrupted community.