With the grand prix again in Berlin this year, the momentum of Romanian cinema's winning streak at the festival shows no signs of relaxing. The following 10 movies can help you understand Romanian New Wave films.
In 2007, Christian Mongi's "Three Weeks and Two Days in April" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which gave the impression that something remarkable was happening in Romania.
Who can declare a "new wave"? Who decides whether it starts or ends? Romanian New Wave directors have always been ambivalent about the so-called movements that are tied together (mainly by the media).
But no one can ignore the explosion of talent in this former communist country, nor can anyone ignore the common features of this film cycle, which often satirizes life during Ceausescu's dictatorship in a comical way, and its legacy in Romania today's free market.
Romania has a distinct new wave of tendencies, including rigid, relentless black humor and minimalism, dialogue-driven naturalism. These all apply to socio-political dysfunction and human weaknesses in more intimate relationships.
Recently, some of the most exciting and daring Romanian directors have turned to more radical experiments. They all have a sense of political urgency and inclusiveness that resists the revival of far-right forces.
The main of these groups are Adina Pintille and Rado Jude, who won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for "Don't Touch Me" (2018) and "Unlucky Sex, Crazy Yellow Film" (2021). Others retreat into a more esoteric and philosophical realm, such as Krysti Puyou's rational, extreme, and exhilarating strange epoch epic Marmcrog Manor (2020).
The quality and energy of surprise in Romanian cinema is still high, and it seems accurate to say that the new wave is not over. Instead, it is developing boldly.
"Three Weeks and Two Days in April" (2007)
Directed by: Christian Monge
New Wave directors have always been committed to telling true, human stories about the humiliations of everyday life under Coescu's rule, rather than the fantasies that propaganda tries to propagate. Based on anecdotes he heard about illegal abortions in that era, Christian Mongi made the grim and ruthless Palme d'Or film Three Weeks and Two Days in April.
Otillia helped her college dorm roommate in a hotel room where she was terminated by a black-market abortionist. It was a traumatic experience that pitted the emotional loyalty of the individual against the enormous power of the state over women's bodies, leaving women vulnerable to exploitation if they handled their own affairs outside the law.
Using cool gray and blue, the shot recreates Romania during the communist era in 1987, where people wait in line for food, bartering for scarce goods. The despair of this era has become a heart-wrenching suspense.
California Dream (2007)
Directed by Christian Nessmecu
An American captain and his troops found themselves stranded for days in a Village in Romania when a corrupt, cynical stationmaster stopped their NATO train, which was delivering military equipment to Kosovo in 1999.
To the other locals, including the stationmaster's daughter, the presence of these outcasts seemed to be the most exciting thing that ever happened in the town (in any case, less traumatic than the arrival of the Russians at the end of the war).
The California Dream is a vivid satire of geopolitical farce, cynical opportunism and the desires of young people, attacking Romania's perennial shortcomings in its historical destiny.
Director Christian Nesmeku, 27, was tragically killed in a car accident in Bucharest, and editing work was completed after his death. The film is long, with the word "endless" added to the title to honor a talented man who has passed away but lives in every frame.
Policeman, Adjectives (2009)
Director: Cornelius Boram
The oppressive years of Ceausescu's regime may be over, but that doesn't mean that the corrupt core or the habits of corrupt bureaucracies, which suffer humiliation and injustice on a daily basis, will change immediately.
Corneliu Boram Boyu's satirical comedy Bucharest East 12:08 satirizes selective memories that distort some of the memories of the Romanian Revolution. He made a clever shift in the police film Policeman, Adjectives, pointing the finger at the hypocritical failure of law enforcement.
Undercover Detective Cristi has a troubled conscience while stalking a high school student who smokes marijuana, and his friends report him for selfish motives. Like many New Wave films, the focus on language itself is central, a legacy of authoritarianism. At the time, the gulf between reality and the truth that the regime had cynically proclaimed was room for many wounds to take root.
I Blow If I Want to Whistle (2010)
Director: Florin Shelban
In I Blow If I Want to Whistle, incarceration is more than just literal. Florin Sherban's film is a rough vision of a divided family under financial pressure and a choice to reduce the state of being. It shows that for those who have nothing, there is no definite happy ending in the new Romania.
Sylviu, 18, is about to be released from a juvenile delinquency institution that has been locked up for four years, and any joy in his imminent freedom is undermined by despair and anxiety about his limited prospects. His mother was an immigrant who worked in a wealthy European country, and her lack of emotion left her with a painful emptiness, and her brief appearance only made her more miserable.
A trainee social worker inspires something in Silviu's heart, even if her uncontrollability exacerbates his anxiety. The film uses non-professionals, handheld cameras, and a realistic labor camp environment to achieve its rough, naked naturalism.
Tuesday After Christmas (2010)
Director: Dura Montaian
In New Wave films, when families are wobbly in crisis, men who question their identity often appear. Radu Jude brilliantly explores family dysfunction in Desperate Dad (2012). Dura Montaian's Tuesday After Christmas provides a keen look at the marriage (and middle-aged) crisis.
Banker Paul had to choose between continuing to live with his wife and their nine-year-old and going public with an extramarital affair with a dental technician in his 20s. This is a naturalism that resists moral preaching. Nor does it glorify infidelity, and relentlessly portrays the full gravity of the emotional consequences that Paul foolishly created in some way.
Romania's transition to free-market capitalism, with more promises than fulfillment, has left citizens questioning the meaning of freedom and the best way to realize individual values. Staging a farce of tried and tested values at home is a means of channeling this broader anxiety.
Breaking Dawn (2010)
Director: Kristi Puyou
Many consider Christie Puyou to be a New Wave enthusiast who made a tortuous road movie about suspicious private companies in 2001, "Lifeless Money," and in the 2005 noir comedy "No Medical Reliability," he tells the story of a grumpy citizen who is torn between hospitals. Puyou's characters often have problems, on the one hand, the incompetence of the system, and on the other hand, the absurd fate of the ruthless fate.
His masterpiece Breaking Dawn shows a trend that will continue throughout his career, and he begins to turn to existentialist thinking about alienation, violence, and death, similar to the style of the Russian thinkers Solovyov and Dostoevsky.
Why do people kill people? Viorell's behavior is both banal logic and profound mystery, and he is an engineer in Bucharest who struggles to accept the fact that he has just divorced, after which he has a nervous breakdown and commits murder. It's a description of masculinity in a state of collapse, and a description of social norms that are far more fragile than the beliefs we are indoctrinated with.
The Autobiography of Nikolai Ceausescu (2010)
Director: Andrei Uzik
Communist dictator Nicolas Ceausescu ruled Romania for nearly a quarter of a century, overthrown in 1989 and executed along with his wife Elena. It was an era that many citizens wished to be able to forget, characterized by brutal political oppression and hard life.
New Wave filmmakers have always insisted that their horrors should not be forgotten and that they should not listen to official accounts. While other directors recounted the everyday reality obscured by state propaganda, and the live-action documentary filmmaker Andrei Uzik turned to the archives, picking out "The Autobiography of Nicola ceausescu" from more than a thousand hours of existing material, creating a portrait of the powerful couple that was by no means flattering.
This magnificent work of his rebellion guides us where and how to look at it, showing that the devil is in the details and that the truth is irresistible for those who wish to see it.
Child Pose (2013)
Director: Carin Pitt Netzer
Karin Pitt Netzer won the Golden Bear, the Berlin Film Festival's top award, for "Child Poses," suggesting that global interest in the poignant satire of social failure in the New Wave did not wane in the 2010s. The film is set in contemporary Bucharest, where everything is negotiable to the elite and the connected, and negligence is just a vignette that can be bypassed or covered up.
Cornelilla, the terrible domineering mother and doctor's wife, insisted that nothing could stop her spoiled son, Bab, from living a charming life, and even that he drove an Audi to death after a few drinks.
A corrupt, intricate system of power characterized by bribery and devoid of ethics was in operation. Cornelia let lawyers and doctors hide or cover up evidence in horrific shows of new money and old methods.
Don't Touch Me (2018)
Director: Adina Pintille
Adina Pintille's first film, Don't Touch Me, nearly caused a scandal when it won the Golden Bear in Berlin. Some don't know how to absorb such a film that is beyond their comfort zone, while others welcome its emotional risk and radical spirit. It was agreed that this was very different from the male films that dominated Romanian cinema in recent years, which focused on the theme of family conflict.
It's a mix of documentary and fiction, not so much a drama as an experimental space—a therapeutic laboratory. Laura Benson plays a woman who tries to get away with the discomfort of being touched by consulting with other people in the family, from transgender people in Munich to married men with spinal muscular dystrophy.
The film sparked an outcry from Romania's conservative media, showing that the New Wave's candor in embracing marginalized stories is far from exhausting the possibilities of its inclusiveness.
Unlucky Sex, Crazy Yellow Film (2021)
Director: Dura Jude
Radu Jude, one of the most wide-ranging directors in the New Wave, has developed into the most fearless voice of political dissent and historical witness.
He also referred to the atrocities of Ceausescu's time, but more often against Romania's complicity in the Holocaust and the racial hatred that fuels today's far-right revival. For example, "What About the History of Nomena" (2018) shows people's attitudes toward past atrocities through public reproduction.
The wild and brutal "Unlucky Sex, Crazy Yellow Film" gave Romania the Third Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in less than a decade.
It saw school teachers publicly denigrated after a scandal on the Internet in Bucharest during the coronavirus period. It is happy to dismantle the pretense of social etiquette, expose the immoral hypocrisy of citizens, and joke about a woman's sex life while remaining silent about decades of blood on the hands of churches and governments.