Discoveries from Romania World Cinema

A retelling of the fairy tale "Cinderella" with bottles.

Nela, Vic, Bogdănel and Mihai go through a series of adventures with the innocence of childhood.

A young woman’s sexual diary. Caught in a web of affective bonds, abuse, and confusion, she vents through WhatsApp to her Romanian lover—both accomplice and source of conflict—in awkward, limited English. A photographic archive of trauma shaped by the communicative barriers of language.

On Christmas Eve, Sebi finds a text message on his father's phone and reads it out loud.

Companion short film for Erika Isac's album of the same name.

An introduction in judicial ballistics and the ways of interpreting and analysing marks, ammunitions and weapons used in judiciary analysed cases.

Multiple kinds of "judicial experiments" (re-enactments) are presented, their purposes and procedures being revealed throughout the film.

A documentary about a multi-faceted and self-taught personality, Ovidiu Georgescu's film presents the life and work of Alexandru Solomon Golgota, a resident of a village in Gorj, who, through his eccentricity, seems detached from a fiction.

Adventure in Hurghada , Egypt

What challenges do same-sex couples in Romania face if they wish to marry? How severe is the suffering and distress for gay couples in Romania due to the denial of their right to marry and start a family? The film 'Forbidden' shows the complicated love story of a 43-year-old woman and her partner. The intimate and warm images are abruptly interrupted by brutal events and the pressure of humiliating and difficult-to-face circumstances. The documentary 'Forbidden' is a story of love and acceptance, but it is also a confrontation with the state authorities, including taking the state to the European Court of Human Rights.

"VUNK - I swear to tell the truth" is the first documentary of a band from Romania. Tracing the history of one of the most beloved rock bands of recent decades, the documentary surprises VUNK fans with new images and stories, starting with their participation in "Singing Romania" in 1988 and continuing with key moments in the 90s, when the band was still performing under the name Vank.

A diary documenting the life of a Syrian family in times when the revolution shifts into a civil war, and the dramatic circumstances they face when the oldest son is called to join the state army.

Commissioned by the Ministry of Oil and filmed in the summer of 1970, in Argeș and Ilfov counties, southern Romania, this film was meant to prevent a dangerous practice particularly widespread among people living in rural areas: the transfer of methane gas into homemade containers as a way of stockpiling ‘emergency’ supplies. The film shows a number of accidents of varying levels of gravity, identified after sixteen days of research in the two counties. Via several sync-sound interviews recorded in villages around the region, this stark educational film reveals the vulnerability of a rural world where, as a result of ignorance and lack of education – and also due to limited availability of regulation gas canisters, an issue which remains unmentioned in the film – people ignored basic safety rules on a daily basis and suffered fatal accidents as a consequence.

The Segalls’ interest in children’s lives dated from the mid-1960s, when, using a camera placed off-stage, they filmed the end of the year festivities at their daughter’s nursery. The result was Big Little Feelings, which won the Silver Dove at the Leipzig Festival in 1964. In the years that followed, the idea of including their own child in some of their films did not sit well with the political bureaucrats. In the end, she would only feature briefly in two short sequences at the end of this and another documentary, filmed eleven years later with the same children (The Feelings Have Grown, 1975). In both films, Doru Segall proudly makes clear that he is both the film’s cinematographer and the father of the girl in the image—a personal, autobiographic detail unusual for a Sahia film. Over the following years, the Segalls continued to work on documentaries about children, including Exams (1976), The High Schoolers (1978), Parents Meeting (1980), and The School Leavers (1986).

This film consists of almost twenty minutes coverage of a political rally, filmed by more than ten Sahia cameramen, during the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of 23 August 1944, ‘the first day of the socialist era’. The Hottest Day is part of a rich author filmography, which includes around one hundred titles, such as A Life Dedicated to the Happiness of the People (1978); Homage (1983); The Party, The Homeland, The People (1986); Heroic Times in Legendary Lands (1987). When the Sahia documentaries obediently followed their political commission, their length could surpass the usual ten to twenty minutes, even reaching feature length. The Hottest Day was one of the shortest film in this category that we could find in the archives.

Let’s work, but how? reproachfully asks one of the workers from the Station for the Mechanization of Agriculture (SMA) in Țăndărei, where filmmaker T. Barta was sent to document the lives of an agricultural brigade. Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, the film was intended for screening in cinemas. Eight days had been allocated for the full shoot, without prior recce. On the first day, the filmmaker gathered the men round a fire—without having informed the local mayor, the Party Secretary or the head of the SMA, as was customary at the time—and recorded their thoughts about their work: sound only, no images. Once that was completed, the remaining days were dedicated to collecting images of the community.

A woman’s journey towards liberation and healing through recollections of her younger self.

Part of the series made at "Alexandru Sahia" Studios.

The documentary gathers stories of people who face their own gravestone photo while still alive. If you could choose one photograph of yourself that others will always remember you by, which one would you choose?

A self-reflecting collage made up of the director’s thoughts and moods while relocating to an alien, poetic Zurich.

Surge of Transference is a video essay that investigates the expansion of the internet in a small Romanian town, where communities have formed and shifted around the newly imported Western technology. Within this micro-universe, the video traces the rapid transformation of the Internet, from the early days of peer-to-peer software to the upload of online late capitalism.

A tale from the 16th century narrates the story of Ursula, a female figure disguised as a man, who successfully chased away occupying intruders (at that time, the Ottomans) using the supersonic sound of a whip. This account purportedly originated in Cincu, the Transylvanian village which today houses one of N.A.T.O.’s key combat training zones in Romania.

After 30 years of marriage, my parents told me they were separating. I fell in love and started my own family during this painful process. The film explores the different shapes that love can take between parents and children and children who become parents.

"Sisyphus" is a take on insignificance, repetition and the invisible chains that bind us to the routine of our daily lives.

Olteanca is a small rural village in Romania. Countryside's life is quiet and time seems to pass slower than usual. Even slow, time still runs, and population is now old. Young people left the village not to come back anymore.

Co-financed by AFCN - the Administration of the National Cultural Fund and implemented by the Untold Stories Association

A reporter from the Scânteia newspaper arrives in the small mountain town of Bocșa to document the abuses committed many years ago, in 1962, by the headmaster of the town's high school, with the complicity of local authorities.

Five simple people past their first youth have the band "Dio Family". Two taxi drivers, a painter, a baker and a nurse try to get out of the monotony of everyday life through their passion for music. Lack of money, free time, fatigue, failures are at every step, but nothing stops them, because they feel that if they give up they will lose this last bet to find their happiness.

Videoclip for a song sung by Romanian singer Loredana.

In a "comfort home 3" on the outskirts of the city, the residents simultaneously experience their erotic passions. A voice-over announces the film's distrust in the idea of ​​maturation. In what follows, some of the most ridiculous situations are presented, interspersed: a frustrated father who invents games that his little boy could play in front of the block, so that he and his wife can have a moment of intimacy in the cramped studio apartment, a neighbor who, while watching a porn movie, is interrupted by a well-educated neighbor, but with a vaguely perverse taste, who knocks on the door under the pretext of wanting to borrow an iron, etc.

Dir. Leonard Hentiu, Catalina Femoaga, Comel Mihalache, Elefterie Voiculescu, Vivi Dragan-Vasile, Stefan Gladin.

Lucas, a boy suffering from anxiety, tries to find a place of comfort while discovering things about himself.

Madleen is a young girl forced to beg on the streets, while carrying a baby. From the moment she realizes the baby has died in her arms, she finds herself in a no-escape situation.

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Mircea and Denis are spending the summer vacation at their grandparents house, in the countryside. Used to the city life, the two teenagers soon get bored and start doing crop circles in a nearby wheat field.

A Romanian short experimental film about the rebuilding of a lost relationship.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a survivor discovers love amidst the ruins, only to find himself alone in our world, facing a deadly disease and the hope of finding the same person in this uncertain reality.

After a few exterior shots in a small mountain town setting, in the noir shadow of a hospital aisle Ana finds out she is very sick from one of her doctor colleagues.

The only Pro Wrestling matches in Romania are in a garage on the outskirts of Bucharest. This documentary is a hands-on portrait of Iorgu Aggressor, the champion of this unknown phenomenon for the Romanian audience, that gives a perspective about the obstacles that the best performer in a niche sport faces, but, more importantly, answers the question “Why do something like this?”

On the waterfront, a few soldiers inspect the perimeter where a festive table has been set up in front of a makeshift wooden stage. The garrison commander greets a motley group of foreign visitors as the waiters open the champagne to start the show. The perspectives alternate, the bah-humbug atmosphere at the guests' table is counterpointed by the reluctance of the performers and the resentment of those who prepare the meal and must serve the guests. From this group, the character played by Marga Barbu stands out for her eccentric, disruptive presence, upsetting the fragile balance of the whole performance and aggravating the already tense situation towards its dramatic climax.

Titi pushes the concept of unconditional love to its extremes with prank phone calls to his mother who is working abroad in Italy. Sorin reluctantly goes along for the ride but seems to be struggling with secret battles and desires of his own. Are we witnessing adolescent fun gone too far, or are these signs of destructive narcissism and a harm to come?

"Dancen" looks at the fleeting impulses that live in between moments of the day. Their precise quality is situated between quiet habits: that is, the space inhabited by yearning, daydreams, surrealism. How would a day look made of just the meaning in between the lines, the momentary glimpses of truth?

30-year old man is looking for a mysterious snake.

Madame S. is about to give her daughter in marriage to Dr. Gluand, a rich old doctor. What she does not know is that Madelene is in love with the doctor's protégé, Marcel. The two begin a clandestine affair, but the doctor discovers their secret and, seeking revenge, decides to unite the two lovers... body and soul.

Iosif Demian returns forty years later to Rosia Montana, the place where two memorable films of the Romanian cinema have been shot: "Nunta de piatra" and "Duhul aurului" for which he signed the cinematography.

He and she meet by chance on the Parisian metro. They are, were, or will be – or not – together in this world without time but with infinite space of metropoems.

Up in the sky, the sun, and another sun, the other’s double. A simple superimposition invokes with all its strength the imaginary and poetics of anticipation, raising, at the same time, the problem of the double. What does the supreme singular represent for our culture of mass reproduction?

An unusual attempt at cinéma vérité, in which people are asked if they are happy, while city lights flood the summer nights to the strains of a tender croon.

Two best friends get through the most challenging moment of their friendship and it all starts when they find each other’s personal diaries.

Following a triggering experience, Eden, the titular character, retreats into her inner world. There she goes through a process of self-discovery, starting from a sense of discomfort with her queer, non-conformist side, and finally reaching self-acceptance and a renewed courage to face the outside world.