Romanian New Wave
“There is not, not, not, not, not a Romanian New Wave,” Cristi Puiu—whose film "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" is the earliest in this collection—averred, with some exasperation, in a 2008 New York Times interview. But how else to limn the filmmakers who emerged like a rash onto the international festival circuit in the 2000s with prickly tales of distress and dysfunction? Despite their directors’ frequent resistance to the term, the films of the Romanian New Wave are tethered by their pitch-black cynicism, formal austerity, and dead-eyed approach to tragedy: a reaction against decades of dictator rule and its aftershocks in public life.
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The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Directed by Cristi Puiu | 147 mins | 2005
Responsible more than any other film for establishing Romanian film as an international force, Puiu’s second feature is a scabrous satire of broken institutions that begins with the ailing elderly Mr. Lazarescu calling an ambulance, then follows him on an... -
12:08 East of Bucharest
Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu | 89 mins | 2006
On the 16th anniversary of the collapse of Nicolae Ceausescu’s oppressive regime just before Christmas, 1989, a TV station in the provincial town of Vaslui, Romania, plans to produce a program on those events, but can only find two “revolutionaries”... -
Child's Pose
Directed by Peter Neter | 112 mins | 2013
Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, "Child’s Pose" offers a scathing indictment of corruption in contemporary Romanian society in the tale of a wealthy mother willing to do anything in order to protect her wastrel son from the consequen... -
Graduation
Directed by Cristian Mungiu | 127 mins | 2016
Nine years after his Palme d’Or-winning breakout—the abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"—"Graduation" landed Cristian Mungiu his third major award at Cannes, this time for best director. He returns to the murky backwaters of institutional co...
