Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

A quick look at the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Travelogue of Craiova, a (then-)small town in southwestern Romania.

The gradual opening-up of Romania during the 1960s continued with the reorganisation, in 1972, of the national strategy for culture and tourism promotion, and the establishment, as part of the new Council for Culture and Socialist Education (CCES), of a special commission in charge of the national strategy for incoming foreign tourists. It was in this context that the National Tourrism Office (ONT) strategically commissioned, via its media arm Publiturism, a series of films meant to persuade various communities from the Romanian diaspora to spend their holidays – and their money – “back home” in Romania.

Ohio riddler faces the emperor of Romania in the ultimate clash to see who will be sleeping with Ceaușescu

Sahia also picked up commercial work from time to time. In this case, literally; a movie stuntman sells personal injury insurance to onlookers. Included as an extra on the Sahia Vintage DVDs.

Andreea, a young tram driver, has a special relationship with the tram she drives every day. Her boyfriend, Marcel, resents what he perceives as a growing affection between Andreea and a machine.

A look at a Romanian classroom in the 1980s.

"This rediscovered film directed by Slavomir Popovici (under his Romanian name, Miron Slavu) was made on command of the Capital's Militsiya. The movie starts from the playful premise that two undisciplined pedestrians are in charge of the city's traffic. Popovici uses this opportunity to stage an anarchic choreography in the city's centre, the film being closer to an avant-garde study. Just like in The Plant, the director abandons linear dramaturgy and chooses to make a playful exercise, a cinematographic exploration of movement and space."

"Filmed at "May the First" plant in Ploiești withe the occasion of the International Labor Day, The Plant is presented as a universe in itself, one which materialises the consubtantiality between social and technologic progress. Popovici felt his film must be a poem that can match the size of its subject. Thus, it became a juxtaposition of "cinematographic ideas related to one of the largest plants in the country". Inspired by soviet avant-garde, the director searches for a revolutionary aesthetic, one able to capture the rupture caused by the New Socialist Order. "

A short inspired by Pablo Neruda's poem "Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines".

Distalgia is a metaphorical story about a man falling into depression due to the passage of time, as he constantly dwells on what he believes was the happiest time of his life, a certain summer. He now sits in a large abandoned cage in the forest, where he watches a painter recreate scenes from his long lost summer, the only place where he can still glimpse into his past.

An ethnographic film about rural Romanian life in the commune of Teișani, Prahova.

They say "Brilliant things happen in calm minds." But what happens in a mind that is not? A late evening meditation becomes a horrifying premonition. And the worst part is, she is not alone.

Romania has the 11th Forza ZU! For 16 years, Romania feels and lives ZU!

A Dying Leaf Should Be Able to Carry the Weight of the World is a visit to the botanical garden and museum in Cluj-Napoca, a journey through time and space, a discovery of plants with unknown stories, of plants that don’t exist anymore, of plants that can tell us as much about the past as they can about the future. Fossils, herbs and botanical illustrations are witnesses of the past, proof of evolution and change, but also prophets of what is yet to come.

A careful portrait of a woman in her fifties. Left without a husband, she has to take on all the household chores in a cramped apartment building, where she lives with her bedridden mother, her immature teenage son who constantly teases her, and his capricious girlfriend – a perpetual agitation filmed with nerve.

Mihai goes out to run and has several encounters that trigger out his social anxiety.

An improvised fiction about a film crew that wants to make a movie about a homeless woman, as an actress, ultimately undermining her image with false goodwill and not truly offering her a role. In other words, about the hypocrisy of film production.

The rituals and the ancient carols practised by the shepherd communities in the Carpathian Mountains are nothing short of those of the ancient Greek and Roman rituals.

With its breathtaking beauty, Transalpina is more than a spectacular roadway serpentining across the mountain. The age of the road connecting Transylvania with Walachia is counted in thousands of years.

Glimpses of nature and distant memories.

A succession of paintings of daily life in Romanian prisons.

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 movie illustrates a down town chase of a trained parkour runner that apparently holds a package of somewhat importance for some local mysterious men in suits.

" The electronic computer - with its many possibilities of fast data processing - is not strictly used in scientific and economic fields anymore, it now plays a direct part in the production process. Filmed at the Galați Steel Mill, the film shows the ways in which the computer conducts the production of steel, making fast decisions in as little time as possible, in raport to the variety of situations which may occur. "

MamaPan is an artisan bakery practicing social economy. A small business that makes a huge difference in the lives of the women who are part of it. Two of them stubbornly fight to keep the business going. Their employees, all single mothers, do their best to change their lives: a former homeless, a Roma illiterate and a financially struggling mother of three.

With his old fashioned camera, the videographer Mr. Zagor (75 years) is documenting the last four years of his life, filming his loneliness and sickness. He shares the fears of his neighbours of being evicted from three different locations where he lived in precarious conditions. A poetic statement and an empowering cinematic document, ‘The Death of Joseph Zagor’ gives voice to the disenfranchised people that do not fit with the new dynamic image of big and expensive cities, such as Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

In the context of the war in Ukraine, two friends discuss the possibility of being drafted. They start challenging each other to prove that they’re not capable of killing anyone.

Neculai, Aurel and Raj all left their homes in Romania for the same reason - to seek a better life for their family. Now, in Britain, with their loved ones depending on them, they survive by creating sand sculptures on London’s streets.

Gestures of Resistance connects the personal testimonies of some of the last survivors of the Holocaust from Romania, Czech Republic and Slovakia through their presentations of antifascist resistance - chapter 1: Armed Resistance, chapter 2: Civil/Political Resistance, chapter 3: Resistance through Art, chapter 4: Resistance through Solidarity.

Four boys between 11 and 13 years old are members of the rock band Blană Bombă. The magnificent four are observed both on the path of artistic transformations, and on the way from childhood to adolescence.

Self-exiled in Turkey since 1999 and recently expelled, Mr. Constantin discovers that he had been declared dead by the Romanian authorities, at the request of his wife.

After getting a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere, Diana is approached by an unknown man who offers to help her. Things seem fine, but the dynamic between them shifts from one extreme to another.

Bearing the signature melancholy, affection, and absurdist irony of associative form that would define his filmography, Copel Moscu’s debut is a loving portrait of miners and their arduous, sun-deprived existence.

A cine-postcard directed at the Bucharest of 2080, For Our Heirs… is a charming time capsule whose innocuous humour and visuals will soon stand in sharp contrast to the harsh reality of the decade’s austerity measures.

The life of Mara, a teenage girl from rural Romania in the 1950s, is turned upside down after her parents arrange a marriage for her with a wealthy young man from a neighboring village. Mara finds herself in a situation with no escape, and her romantic feelings for her friend, Ioana, upset her completely.

At the border between traditional live coverage (that describes the stages of grape reaping) and a private family movie, the film shows a visit to the estate of Avram Ghiltcik.

On Akhmeteli St. #4 in Tbilisi, Georgia, there stands a decrepit apartment house the director of this documentary once grew up in. After 10 years spent abroad, he returns to capture the daily life of his neighbors on camera. the author quietly observes their private stories and examines how they are able to find happiness despite economical hardship and how they preserve their personalities and humor in spite of disillusion. Artistically, the film is based on the house as a microcosm metaphorical of today‘s Georgian society.

Portrait of a Romanian bourgeois family.

Counterintelligence film from communist Romania. Also known as "Stația pilot"

Counterintelligence film from communist Romania.

In the 90's and early 2000's Romanian mainstream press began reporting on homosexuality and activism in a very flashy and sensationalistic manner. Notes on Hiding focuses on what the media didn't report on.

In May 2013, a house was to be demolished. A few artists were called for proposals in what was to become a one-off during a day and a night exhibition about loss and disappearance.

The first film produced by FAV is a sociopolitical musical featuring Valeriu Sterian and the Sound Company, from which we extracted four of the ten songs of the “album” (Escu, The future political prisoners want to know, We will be what we have been, and A plea without a bridle.)

The film tells the story of a man that goes through life being an actual clown. Not by choice, he is just born this way. We get to watch him going through a few crucial moments of his life like his birth, school, job, first love. We witness his downfall as life becomes harder and people become meaner.

On the banks of Ozana follows the lives of children who dedicate their time to agricultural work.

Shukar Collective play bear tamer music using spoons, wooden barrels or daraboukas, whilst a couple of DJs add layer after layer of urban sound over this traditional music. It is this kind of eclectic environment that best describes what the documentary deals with: culture contact.

Blurring the line between memory and imagination, the film tells the story of a girl and her father, who have embarked on a wintery voyage. As the girl loses her sight, she reminisces about a strange encounter with a baby flamingo, while her father questions her experience.

"Portavoce" (Megaphone) traces back the evolution of a culture of protest in Romania, developing in recent years, through the voices and opinions of key actors involved in social mobilization, in direct actions and in the development of a cultural scene favorable to political involvement.

A movie about chickens and kids. The film was made in 1985, but screened only in 1990 for reasons that even Communist censors found hard to explain. A chicken farm that was very modern for its time included a kindergarten reserved for the employees’ children. The film uses the parallel between raising chicken and human babies as the starting point for a meditation on human nature.

A French crew sets up in a Romanian village to film a documentary series. While the first episodes, on the traditions of baptism and marriage, go off without a hitch, it's a different story when it comes to burial: nobody decides to die. The team decided to stage the funeral, drawing the superstitious villagers into their macabre game.

A collage of footage shot in 2021 and 2022 edited together into a documentary that analyses the transition from Autumn to Winter to Spring.

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.

After a long life of hard work, 94-year-old Maria outsmarts a priest in her Romanian village.

Lanczy, the son of the handyman of the village falls in love with the innkeeper's daughter. The innkeeper promises his daughter to Lanczy if he is willing to go to war instead of his son.