Tag: Romania

The 21st Transylvania Film Festival implores us to make films, not war

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

This year’s Transylvania Film Festival, the biggest film festival in Romania, comes with a challenge: “make films, not war.” Representing a country that borders both war-torn Ukraine and close-friends Moldova — also under threat from Russian aggression — TIFF is deeply committed to showing off the best of cinema in extremely troubled times.

While cinema itself cannot offer the vaccine, it might be able to offer a balm; as shown by their prior success in putting on in-person events in 2020 and 2021 while other summer festivals switched to digital-only editions. Set in Cluj-Napoca — known as Romania’s second city after Bucharest, and often touted as its creative centre and an LGBT hub — the 21st edition of the festival switches its attention to the war in Ukraine, not through furthering division but by allowing the power of cinema to show off our common humanity.

Therefore, while Ukrainian refugees and citizens are given free access to films at the festival, and Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s Ukrainian Pamfir (pictured above) is a hotly anticipated title, Russian films aren’t completely cut off either. Kirill Serebrennikov’s 2021 Cannes film Petrov’s Flu plays, as well as Lado Kvataniya’s serial killer drama The Execution. The latter plays as part of the competition series, which focuses on first and second features, and has counted films such as Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy, 2020), Oslo 31st August (Joachim Trier, 2012) and Cristian Mungiu’s debut Occident (2002) among its previous winners.

In fact, TIFF’s success has helped to put Romanian cinema on the map, often starting as a launching pad for its belated 00s New Wave, a movement that’s still going strong and situates Romanian filmmakers among some of the best in the world. It makes me particularly excited for Romanian competition entries A Higher Law (Octav Chelaru) and Mikado (Emanuel Pârvu). Over four days I’ll be digging into what the festival has to offer, providing dispatches from the front-line of cutting-edge world cinema. Follow our coverage on Dmovies

TIFF Official Competition 2022

A Higher Law (Romania, Germany, Serbia, Octav Chelaru)

Babysitter (Canada, Monia Chokri)

Beautiful Beings (Iceland, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson)

Feature Film About Life (Lithuania, Dovile Sarutyte)

Gentle (Hungary, László Csuja, Anna Nemes)

Mikado (Czech Republic, Romania, Emanuel Pârvu)

Magnetic Beats (France, Germany, Vincent Maël Cardona)

The Last Execution (Germany, Franziska Stünkel)

The Night Belongs To Lovers (France, Julien Hilmoine)

The Execution (Russia, Lado Kvantaniya)

Utama (Bolivia, Uruguay, France, Alejandro Loayza Grisi)

Pamfir (Ukraine, France, Poland, Chile, Germany, Luxemburg, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk)

Documentary Competition

You Are Ceaușescu to Me (Romania, Sebastian Mihăilescu)

Bucolic (Poland, Karol Pałka)

Excess Will Save Us (Sweden, Morgane Dziurla-Petit)

Chanel 54 (Argentina, Lucas Larriera)

Brotherhood (Italy, Czech Republic, Francesco Montagner)

Mother Lode (Switzerland, France, Italy, Matteo Tortone)

Ostrov (Switzerland, Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop)

The Plains (Australia, David Easteal)

Atlantide (Italy, Yuri Ancarani)

For A Fistful Of Fries (Belgium, France, Jean Libon and Yves Hinant)

Transilvania Film Festival runs from June 17th to the 26th, 2022.

Ivana the Terrible

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Ivana is perfectly healthy. Multiple trips to the doctor make sure that there’s absolutely nothing physically wrong with her. But she’s convinced of her own sickness. Constantly claiming her hair is falling out while complaining of dizziness, she might be the most memorable hypochondriac since Woody Allen’s Mickey in Hannah and her Sisters. Played with perfect irascibility by director Ivana Mladenovic, she lashes out at friend and family alike, providing a bristly portrait of a returning expat who really doesn’t enjoy being home.

Based on a true summer in 2017 of the Serbian-born, Romania-based director, when she returned to the border town of Kladovo, Ivana the Terrible provides the metafictional director with plenty of space for self-reflection and insight. It comments on the relations between the two Balkan nations with tenderness and acuity.

There’s a lot to absorb that might goes over the head of those not well-versed in inter-Balkan relations. Thankfully Mladenovic’s talent as a director keeps us invested throughout this awkward comedy slash documentary experiment which recalls the best of Abbas Kiarostami in its blending of reality and fantasy as well as the self-absorption of Woody Allen’s most self-reflective work (the seasoned filmmaker receiving a prize in Stardust Memories most readily comes to mind).

This is brave filmmaking, especially for a woman returning to a small, patriarchal-minded town. Unafraid to make herself positively unlikeable — at least in the reflection of her family, remarkably also playing versions of themselves, who constantly ask her when she will either get a real job or become a mother — she moves beyond a conventional portrait to create a bristly, exciting and restless film.

Ivana the TerribleT

Her first mistake — also sharing similarities with many Woody Allen protagonists — is in sleeping with a man 13 years younger than her. Her second is in her lack of deference towards the local politicians of the city, who want to use her as one of the headline acts of a cross-cultural Serbian-Romanian festival.

As a woman, she constantly has to be grateful: grateful to the family who raised her, grateful to the town that now praises her. Yet Mladenovic keeps asking questions as to how much they really participated to her success. In the background is the awkward tension between Romanians and Serbians, sharing a complicated history that grows and grows in significance until a Radu Jude-esque final scene.

Despite the ambition in realising the film, the filmmaking style is grounded in realist traditions. Nonetheless, it still uses a few clever wide shots to produce a sense of alienation, especially coming at odds with otherwise intimate scenes. One moment in particular, framing an awkward conversation streamed on Facebook Live behind men dining in a restaurant, is a masterclass in using depth-of-frame to deepen a comic moment.

For one thing, the fact of its mere creation shows both Mladenovic’s family and the local forces in this Serbian town — who really do have a festival in Kladovo every year — to be far better sports than the movie asserts; able to laugh at themselves in service of strange and compelling art.

Ivana the Terrible is showing during the month of December as part of ArteKino. You can watch it at home and entirely for free – just click here!

Poppy Field (Mooniväli)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

A member of the Romanian Gendarmerie faces up to the secrets of his personal life in the LGBT drama Poppy Field, a gripping, minimalist tale from first-time feature director Eugen Jebeleanu. Essentially comprised of two elongated scenes, it subtly refracts upon itself to deliver a fascinating tale of being closeted in a hyper-masculine society.

Cristi (Conrad Mericoffer) is hosting his French Muslim boyfriend Hadi (Radouan Leflahi) at his flat. They cannot keep their hands off each other, almost instantly falling into bed. Life outside of the bedroom isn’t so simple. When Hadi broaches the idea of visiting the mountains for a night, Cristi waves it away with a variety of weak excuses. There is the sense that he is hiding something, boiling over into an awkward encounter when his seemingly well-meaning sister comes over to visit.

The second, longer act of the film puts Cristi’s tortured complexity into context. On the police beat, he is called to the scene of a queer cinema screening that is being blocked by ultra-nationalist protestors. Based on the true story of the 120 BPM being blocked by religious protestors in Romania, we are shown this scene in realistic detail, Jebeleanu creating a sense of chaos and spectacle through handheld framing and overlapping dialogue. When Cristi meets a former lover at that same screening, he quickly spirals out of control, potentially causing controversy when the encounter turns violent.

The film is shot in a classic Romanian New Wave style: stripped of artifice and filled with elliptical dialogue. Cinematographer Marius Panduru employs multiple long, intense takes that don’t call attention to themselves while maintaining a tense and claustrophobic environment. This simple and unadorned approach creates a true sense of authenticity and specificity, allowing us to reflect on the particular environment Cristi is trying, and mostly failing, to navigate, indicting wider Romanian society in the process.

Some viewers may be put off by the single-minded approach of the film, which only uses a couple of locations to convey the conflicted inner state of its main protagonist. I found it absolutely engrossing, especially the way the other cops — who occupy a strange middle-ground between the LGBT friendly theatre-goers and the religious zealots — try and calm Cristi down through the use of monologues that are alternately sad, funny and a little strange. Often shot in just one take, they betrays a great amount of confidence in the cast to carry scenes with words and subtle facial gestures alone. Mericoffer, in particular, is brilliant, able to convey the difficult inner life of his protagonist without relying on any unnecessary or overblown gestures.

Simply put, this is an exciting, morally grey film tackling a complex topic within a country that is still in the process of fully recognising LGBT rights. Stressing realism over didacticism while realising the full humanity of nearly all its players, it’s more proof of the rich and exciting potential of contemporary Romanian film to make fascinating art out of simple premises.

Poppy Field played as part of the First Feature competition at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 13th to 29th November, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in March, as part of the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival.

Uppercase Print (Tipografic Majuscul)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Two films in one. In the former, we learn of Romanian Mugur Călinescu, who, upon listening to messages from Radio Free Europe in 1981, writes pro-democracy messages on walls in chalk. In the second, Radu Jude presents archival footage from the time. The propaganda scenes, however staged, are exciting and filled with life; the reality, however true, is artificially staged and alienating. They form a curious dialectic: Romania as it really was, and Romania as it presented itself on television.

It starts with a quote by Michel Foucault: “the resonance I feel when I happen to encounter these small lives, reduced to ashes in the few sentences that struck them down.” Starting mid-sentence, it is typical for the Romanian director, who likes to present things to you piecemeal, expecting the viewer to fill in their own details.

This quote is more apposite considering the way the stages are set up. Arranged in a circle, they resemble his famous panopticon, and stress the all-powerful surveillance scheme of the Securitate, the secret police force of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

An adaptation by the documentary play by Gianina Cărbunariu — which was assembled through police transcripts and secret recordings — these scenes are deliberately alienating. Characters recite their lines with little passion, meticulously explaining the events around Călinescu’s illegal pro-democratic writings and how the Securitate came into contact with them. They are framed against bright pink and purple lights, with giant tape recorders and televisions in the background, deliberately making everything feel artificial.

Uppercase Print

If these scenes are carefully calibrated, the propaganda is far more chaotic. Ranging from the obvious pageantry found in a dictatorship to songs about children being the future to people being fined for honking their car horns illegally, these scenes form a strange and bewildering counter-narrative. What makes it a disorientating experience is that the links between the two clips are not obvious, forcing the viewer to work through their own connections.

Radu Jude makes active films as opposed to passive ones. You can’t simply sit back and enjoy a film like Uppercase Print; you have to bring your own intellect to bear upon Jude’s, making them challenging cine-texts. Nonetheless, for those patient enough to tackle them on their own terms, they can be immensely rewarding.

If there’s a through-line between this and Radu Jude’s previous film, the more stylistically diverse I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians — which tackled Romania’s shameful role during WW2 — it is the sad fact that people don’t know or reflect upon the mistakes of history.

The entire film comes together in its final moments — which jolt us back into the present day, showing that little has truly changed. One of the men justifies his surveillance tactics by invoking Cambridge Analytica; reminding us that constant surveillance is hardly a concept novel to communism. By analysing Romania in such forensic detail, the film opens up to the world, reminding us that these issues can happen anywhere.

A truly difficult work, its not one I can say I enjoyed as much as I found intellectually stimulating, like listening to a fascinating yet over-long lecturer from an intermittently charismatic professor. Nonetheless, it remains a convincing reminder that Jude is one of the most unique directors working out of Eastern Europe today. I want to see everything he’s made.

Uppercase Print played in the Forum section of the Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. Watch it online for free in December only with ArteKino

Memento Amare

Posted on by victorfraga

Mihai (Cristanel Hogas) is an immigrant. And as such he is divided between two nations. His beautiful wife and his young daughter dwell in Romania. Mihai is in London, where he toils as a construction worker, presumably in order to save money and provide a better future for his family. His relationship with his family is vibrant and colourful, while his life in the UK is sombre and colourless. This is emphasised by the photography, which switches from plush tones to black and white according to the geography and the protagonist’s state-of-mind.

The young Romanian gave up his own personal kingdom, complete with queen and little princess, in favour of a faraway and hardly hospitable Kingdom. He hasn’t seen his beloved ones in two years, he confides to a coworker. The United Kingdom is portrayed as a dark and divided nation. Immigrants are everywhere: there are Romanian and Bulgarian construction workers, and a Syrian refugee working in the local convenience store. Yet these people are not integrated into the heart of a nation that has become increasingly immigration-hostile and downright racist.

The action takes place shortly after the Brexit referendum. Enthusiastic Remainers are campaigning on the streets: “Not in Hackney, not in Brixton, not in our name, we want to Remain”. But the bigots are equally empowered, and the repression expresses itself in other shapes and forms. Mihai and other immigrants lose their job due to the prospect of leaving the EU, and Mihai has to work as a handyman in order to make ends meet. And he encounters violence on the streets: “Stop stealing our jobs and benefits, go back to your country”.

Memento Amare is a movie about wanting to move on, but being held back because of perverse circumstances. It is not a didactic and linear drama. The narrative is complex and multilayered. It zigzags back and forth: in time, between countries, between reality, allegory and imagination. Viewers are made to wear to shoes of a hard-working economic immigrant, and to experience his roller-coaster emotions and split allegiances.

Because the movie is not entirely chronological, there are hints of the disclosure in the very opening sequence. The outcome looks bleak yet inevitable. And it raises a number of questions: Could the psychological wounds of Brexit could stay open for decades? How will the “orphaned” generations react to having their king (and their kingdom) taken away from them? Is it possible that the young may seek justice with their hands? Is warring the only road towards redemption? One thing looks certain: solidarity has collapsed (perhaps to the point of no return), and the future is not bright.

You can watch Memento Amare at home on VoD.