Critics have called this a cine-symposium, and rightly so as Puiu’s latest is an ultra-dense and ultra-slow exercise that sees five individuals debate over their stubborn—and at times arrogant—views on religion, morality and mortality in thought-provoking but dullish fashion.
Football as cinema, if only barely, as the director and his father talk about the latter’s refereeing of the game, and by extension, Romania’s late ‘80s political history in this uneventful and uncompelling documentary.
This intense and highly-satisfying three-hour chamber piece revolving around the gathering of an extended family in an apartment is a masterclass in the rigours of acting and blocking.
A schoolteacher and her circulating sex tape headline Radu Jude’s new sociopolitical experiment—a piercing satire on everything wrong with the world that is as savagely non-PC as it is hilarious.
Intercutting archival footage from state-controlled television with Brechtian style enactments, Radu Jude’s indictment of 1980s Communist Romania will test the patience of even the most hardened experimental-arthouse cineaste.
One of Coppola’s weakest efforts in what is a heavy-handed and muddling mess of a film, despite the good performance by Tim Roth.
A gorgeously shot pitch-black comedy that brings to light something long forgotten – Gypsy slavery, with an interest in deepening our intellectual engagement with Romania and its dark history.
A Romanian crime-comedy noir of sorts with deadpan faces serving a tight if convoluted narrative about deceit and double-crossings.
A low-key Romanian drama that struggles to find any kind of meaningful rhythm but is somewhat compensated by its droll tone and allegorical intent.
This highly-provocative Golden Berlin Bear winner does something unusual and unlikely—it forces us to rethink about human intimacy and sexuality through the uncomfortable lens of the camera.
