A free re-enactment of a real case: a man who tried to cross the Danube illegally using an oxygen cylinder, to escape the communist Romania. Read More »

Adrian and Ninel are among the inmates crammed into the freight cars that have just arrived in one of the forced labor camps of the Danube-Black Sea Canal. Among those convicted, there are teachers, lawyers, poets, philosophers, peasants, artists, scientists. Gradually, they realize they are there because the communist regime wants to exterminate them all. Read More »

In her long-gestating first feature, Adina Pintilie uses bodies of all types to explore the boundaries of intimacy and challenge notions of beauty, which clearly wouldn’t be possible without a significant display of naked flesh. Whether she’s achieved that goal, however, will very much depend on the individual, as “Touch” is a divisive film that aims to address more issues than it can persuasively handle. Seamlessly blending fiction with reality, Pintilie invents a story about an Englishwoman grappling with intimacy issues and weaves in real people guiding her toward being comfortable with her body and the bodies of others. Read More »

Plot Synopsis from allmovie.com
Romanian director Cristian Nemescu’s comedy California Dreamin’ unfolds against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, circa 1999. A NATO train rolls through a Romanian hamlet, transporting a plethora of weapons across the country – without official documents, and equipped only with the verbal consent of the Romanian authorities. The transport thus grows intensely vulnerable to the locals – particularly the head of the railway station, who moonlights as a mobster. Read More »

Quote:
“Tuesday, After Christmas” (Marti, dupa craciun, 2010) is the latest film from Romania to hit the film festival circuit and cause a stir. I saw it at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival.

A great many of the films coming from Romania have all been fiercely political. There was “12:08 East of Bucharest” (A Fost sau n-a fost, 2007), “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile, 2007), “How I Spent The End of the World” (Cum mi-am petrecut sfarsitul lumii, 2006) and the movie which started this recent “new wave” in Romanian cinema “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (Moartea domnului Lazarescu, 2006). But “Tuesday, After Christmas” is much different. There is absolutely no mention of politics or even social injustice. Read More »

In Transylvania, in the 19th century, the village birthplace of a rich farmer’s son is undergoing a cholera epidemic when he returns from studying at a university, and bodies are being removed from houses. Once at home, he spies the beautiful daughter of a local forester. However, one of his father’s servants has also seen her, and they become rivals in love. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
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One sunny day at the park, five-year-old Maria and her brother Ilie are running around the busy playground. Dad Tudor drinks coffee and chats to the other parents. Everyone is keeping an eye out and yet, suddenly, the unthinkable happens: Maria is gone. Helpers are called in and do their utmost, but that evening Tudor and his wife Cristina are at home, devastated: their daughter has really disappeared.
Director Popescu shows how disruptive grief and pain are by following Tudor for over two hours as the latter attempts to arrive at an answer. Is Cristina’s charming ex-colleague somehow involved? And who is that childless oddball at the park? Watching him disintegrate as blind desperation takes hold is soul-destroying. Popescu records all this with quiet, chilling distance using prize-winning actors and sure-footed camerawork that can be suddenly, intensely close at times. Read More »