The year in cinema is already halfway done – which means an excellent opportunity to review the year’s major Romanian premieres and to take a more distant look at this first inning: by all appearances, it’s a game that started on strong terms, followed by a painfully missed chance to score.

In this climate, a statement made by the artistic director of TIFF Cluj, Mihai Chirilov, during the press conference that announced the selection of the festival’s 22nd edition, sparked a lot of discussions: referring to the almost 50 Romanian features that they had received as submissions, he claimed that “It’s not the best time for the Romanian cinema. And maybe the Cannes Film Festival was right not to select anything this year, because (…) it’s not enough to make a film from a fashionable country to be selected there every year. You have to come up with something else, to surprise.” It is quite obvious why such a statement has the power to unnerve some. So I suggest we look at it a little more closely, not only in the context of what has happened so far on the international scene but especially through the prism of what Chirilov selected for this year’s festival edition.

Is Cannes an objective measure?

The fact that no Romanian films were selected this year at Cannes was anxiogenic for certain spheres of the local industry – and was quickly taken as a general diagnosis of the current year, despite a rare presence in the Bright Future section in Rotterdam (Tiger, by Andrei Tănase) and the double selection of Mammalia – Between Revolutions at the Berlinale Forum (both of which are currently enjoying a consistent festival run) in winter, acting as a brake on this incipient enthusiasm about the quality of productions in 2023.

Of course, one may interpret the absence of a quite popular national cinema from the Croisette (even though it’s still marginal within the grand scheme of things) as a signal about its health. However, we do have some strong counter-examples to this: take 2022, where the two selected features (R.M.N. and Metronom) didn’t have a lasting impact on the local and international critical discourse. Or 2021, when Bad Luck Banging established itself as the most important Romanian film of the decade (so far) after its triumph in Berlin, when the only Romanian representatives in Cannes were a handful of shorts – of these, Andrea Borțun’s transcendental Where Night Meets Dawn created a bubbling, and effervescent enthusiasm within the local critical community, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in a long time.

This relates to the inherently problematic nature of defining the success of a national cinema in relation to its international success – of course, if one were to ask local audiences, the most successful films of the year are still Romina, VTM and Haita de actiune – because this is intrinsically connected with the ways we discuss the idea of national cinema, especially concerning the notion of canonical cinema and new waves. I wrote more about this in the 29th issue of Film Menu, but to briefly recap, when it comes to post-WWII cinema, whenever a particular national cinema (in Thomas Elsaesser’s dual sense) was canonized by global cinephilia, its success was always closely related to the selection of its films on the international festival circuit. Since Cannes is regarded as the circuit’s crown jewel (and, indeed, one must concede that it has had the greatest contribution to the global popularization of contemporary Romanian cinema), it is easy to understand why the festival has come to be perceived as a sort of litmus test: a selection in Cannes means another shot at entering a new film into the ranks of the global canon, even if, in practice, not all the films that make it to the Croisette (automatically) receive this sort of recognition.

But it’s still far too early to make a comprehensive diagnosis of the quality of Romanian cinema in 2023 – if one is to lend credence to the rumors that are currently swirling around the industry, the festivals in Locarno, San Sebastian, and possibly even Venice are likely to announce the world premieres of certain Romanian films, and the major non-fiction festivals that are set during fall time (such as IDFA or Ji.hlava) will also probably announce a few new titles.

Perspectives from TIFF

Of course, there is also the question of TIFF – which is still the most important annual summit of Romanian cinema. Despite a fairly consistent presence (9 feature films in competition, 8 out of competition), one must point out that quite a number of them (Boss, Men of Deeds, and To the North) had already been distributed in Romanian cinemas. Moreover, two other titles had already had their national premiere last autumn at the Astra documentary film festival (O tahtai, The Eagles of Țaga). This leaves us with two world premieres, both documentaries, made by filmmakers based in Cluj – the rockumentary Blue Planet, by Dani Sărăcuț and My Muslim Husband, co-directed by Daniel and Alexandra Bărnuți. In fact, more than half of the films in the competition were documentaries – which is a fact to be welcomed, crowned by Vlad Petri’s victory with Between Revolutions (which seems to be slowly but surely taking its place in the canon of Romanian montage films). (Speaking of rockumentaries – a genre that is still emergent in Romania, and is mostly copying its Western formula, meaning that it’s still a modest, somewhat inadequate current – the selection included OCS 25 and Har/Jar, both released in 2022.)

The year’s feature film landscape, as seen within TIFF’s competition, looks a bit like this: first off, we have two neo-noirs that are tinkering with the tropes of the New Romanian Cinema – that are at the very least modest if not outright flops. The first is Paul Negoescu’s Men of Deeds, although carried by a worthy performance by actor Iulian Postelnicu, stumbles into extremely outdated discourses about provincial corruption, and then sinks straight to the bottom with its forced Schrader-esque ending, and then there’s Bogdan Mirică’s Boss, a deeply afflicted pastiche in which misogyny is, inevitably, par for the course. Then, we have two comedies: a narrative one that doubles as a character study (Tiger, by Andrei Tănase), but that gets lost in subplots that unnecessarily hamper the narrative and in meme-like humor, and a vaguely surrealistic one that sometimes feels like a B horror movie (Mammalia, by Seb Mihăilescu), itself lost in its sterile understanding of what it means to „subvert gender roles”. Rounding out the list is an arthouse thriller, To the North, by Mihai Mincan – which, while far from perfect (even so, it’s certainly one of the best Romanian debuts in recent years), is the only film from this crop that has broader ambitions in terms of its political discourse, as well as in its outreach to a more international audience. Other than that, I am left with the impression that most efforts are still mentally (and thematically) stuck in a sort of provincialist mindstate – either attempting to apply foreign recipes to local flavor or by using references that are so very specific to the local discourse that they cannot surpass any sort of symbolic cultural borders.

Speaking of local obsessions, this is a good opportunity to discuss the national premiere of Alexandru Solomon’s Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife, which will soon have its international premiere in Karlovy Vary. Marking a return to the director’s trademark usage of voice-overs, the film goes for a type of genre that is still quite rare in Romanian cinema, that of the performative documentary. From the very beginning, this implies a blurring of the unspoken, yet oft-insurmountable boundary between camera and subject in non-fictional cinema; in other words, a so-called “invisible camera” is rejected from the very outset, in favor of a hyper-visible camera that knowingly generates and directly influences the things which it records.

Starting with his famous 2017 performance at the Romanian Patriarchate, Solomon seeks to deconstruct his contempt for the Romanian Orthodox Church (indeed, here, his political positions are as transparent as can be) – and he decides to go about it by seeing what attracts Romanian believers to the figure of Arsenie Boca, as he takes a few of them on a sort of pilgrimage through the places in which this modern religious superstar spent his life. During the tour, the group re-enacts various moments from Boca’s life, which are mostly depicted in archival materials discovered in the archives of the Secret Police. The group then discusses these events in an open circle, touching upon the figure’s ties with Romanian fascism or his strategies for promoting himself during the communist regime (which the believers often summarily reject as false, still, this does lead to some very bellicose discussions – such as one regarding his sexuality, which the women of the group end up arguing about).

A fascinating film, to be sure, but despite its participatory device (after all, members of the group assume that they are being filmed) it still leaves that feeling that some of the subjects are quite vulnerable – because, at the end of the day, we often hear the characters saying things that are so ridiculous that they often reach to the point of the grotesque, like “The gate of Heaven looks like the one in Auschwitz”; even so, Arsenie is much more a cynical film which invites us to simply deride its protagonists – it’s a much-needed cold shower, given the political landscape of 2022.

Before we conclude, let’s not forget the two pink elephants in TIFF’s TIFF room: the first, and biggest of them being MMXX, Cristi Puiu’s fifth feature – perhaps the most condemning exclusion from Fremaux’s programming; even the absence of this one title from the roster Cannes hangs extremely heavy, but we’ll go more in-depth once the film has its international premiere. I’ll just leave you with a short observation – Puiu’s pandemic-themed project is much less biting than its synopsis would lead on, save for its final vignette – or, to quote Șerban Mark Pop’s review in AperiTIFF, “the film’s first three stories can be entirely detached from COVID-19, except for some fine details or easily-replaceable conventions”.

The smaller elephant is Freedom – which marks the second time that Tudor Giurgiu has organized the world premiere of his own film at his own festival (at least this time, not as the opening feature – and without canceling other screenings when the planned open-air screening was canceled due to weather conditions). As I haven’t seen the film, I obviously can’t speak about it, per se (a drama regarding a particular incident in the aftermath of the Romanian Revolution.) Even so, I can only be wary of such decisions – after all, isn’t there some sort of incompatibility between Giurgiu’s two functions? Of course, one could argue that this is a privately-owned event (and for the sake of it, I’ll disregard all the public support and funding that goes towards TIFF), that such rules only apply to state enterprises, that other filmmakers in Romania also organize festivals and present their films there – even so, I will say that it’s not for nothing that all the major festivals on the continent are chaired by professional curators and former critics.

Notes on short films

On the other hand, there is one specific place where Chirilov’s statement misses the mark: Romanian short films, where his selection seems to contradict him. For, indeed, it seems to be the best year for short films since 2017/2016, but with one major difference: if, six or seven years ago, the predominant narrative and aesthetic formula was still heavily inspired by the New Romanian Cinema (with very few exceptions – such as Roxana Stroe’s A Night in Tokoriki or Andrei Huțuleac’s Offstage, which playfully incorporated the movement’s tropes just to deconstruct them), now, the landscape is much more formally diverse.

Make no mistake: the realist vein is still strong, and still closely linked to the topic of the family – such as Lara Ionescu’s award-winner Holiday Exercise, or Liviu Mărghidan’s Pink, both unfortunately plagued by scripts that are mired by automatic gestures and half-measures and. The most formally interesting of these films is Alma Buhagiar’s Sentimental Education, with its close-ups highlighting the grotesqueness of a bourgeois family that draws its lifeblood from immoral economic practices and brutal exchanges. However, the most powerful of them all is Andreea Lăcătuș’s Between Night and Day, a perfectly executed drama about a mother’s attempt to leave her abusive husband, led by an impeccable Andreea Grămoșteanu, which reads like a feminist guide to the challenges faced by a woman who finds herself in such a situation – from her hesitation to involve the authorities, to her strategies to exit and to rebuild her life, to her peers that downplay and normalize the abuse she is facing.

What is truly exciting is this handful of films that are openly toying with genre conventions (even though not all are successful – like Suruaika, or Where No Ships Go). Take Sasha, an animation by Serghei Chiviriga, which starts as an episode of a show aimed at toddlers, only for it to turn into a queer metaphor on gender fluidity that is unparalleled in Romanian cinema – or Carina Dașoveanu’s strange Venus, which takes a script that seems to have been written for some cheap soap opera, and encases it in such a strange and destabilizing form that it becomes camp (just see the club sequence, set to The Knife’s Pass This On! ), then an outright farce, only for it to rebound into transcendental territory. Also notable are the two documentaries in the selection – this portrait of a metalhead that is into pro wrestling, Iorgu! (dir. Matei Preda), which is at times inspired by the lo-fi aesthetic of Norwegian black metal videos, and The Whole Family (dir. Alexandra Diaconu), this portrait of a family who prepares to bury its grandfather, that has a somewhat weird relationship with the body of the deceased; a quite uncomfortable film with brimming gallows humor, in which the concept of voyeurism reaches some unimaginable heights (see the sequences in which the body of the dead man is shown to some faraway relatives via Facetime).

Finally, I’d like to highlight Vlad Popa’s remarkable double selection this year – with Alibaba and Sketches of Still Life, the most self-reflexive short films at this year’s TIFF (along with Ioachim Stroe’s Two Words, Three Lies, which situates itself in the long tradition of reenactments in Romanian cinema). That Popa is an exegete of Radu Jude is indisputable – only time will tell if he will turn into an epigone. It’s sensible from the very opening shots of Alibaba, shot in the same neighborhood as the first chapter of Jude’s Bad Luck Banging, with actress Katia Pascariu sneaking into what is otherwise a fully documentary setting, to the one in Sketches of Still Life, which is a direct quote of the long single shot in A Film for Friends (2011). The latter is constructed around a formally ingenious gimmick – the camera’s point of view is that of a painting, which is admired for the vast majority of the film by the characters who wander around in front of it. Said characters, for the most part, are art students who mainly indulge in discussions that are crammed with references to various artistic manifestos & such, a meta-discursive note that is at times heavy-handed, but which primarily works quite well. Granted, the film’s 35-minute-long runtime doesn’t suit its central device, and many of its sketches could have been discarded at the editing table, but even in all of its imperfection, the film reveals a filmmaker that is concerned with the inner workings of cinema, with form, with the gaze – all of them treated much more maturely and subtly in Alibaba, which allows itself to delve deeper into its narrative and political planes. Popa’s future path is certainly one to keep an eye on – whether, and how exactly he will choose to individualize his cinematic discourse is yet unknown, but the signs look promising, so far.

What is there left to be seen?

However, as I said earlier, the year is far from over – and to make any sort of firm prediction on what is to come, one needs to take a look at the National Film Centre’s annual index of Romanian films in post-production. It is the most comprehensive list of its kind in the country – with the caveat that it is limited to films that have been supported by the institution (either as majority productions or as minority co-productions), so it is hard to say what fully independent films will be released this year. (At the same time, there is no guarantee that the films on this list – especially the non-fiction ones – will be released in the next six months, but it does give us a fairly well-defined overview.)

The undisputable headliner is Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World, the first feature-length film released by the prolific Radu Jude since Bad Luck Banging. Shot during the second half of 2022, featuring a debut leading role for actress Ilinca Manolache, Don’t… is already scheduled for a Romanian release at the end of October. Although the list also includes upcoming titles by established directors, some of them returning after considerable breaks (Călin Peter Netzer, Adrian Sitaru, Paul Negoescu, Andrei Cohn, Bogdan Theodor Olteanu, Tudor Jurgiu), I have to admit that what makes optimistic about the Romanian cinema to come is the large number of productions directed by female filmmakers – especially feature film debuts: Andreea Borțun’s Blue Banks, Cecilia Ștefănescu’s The Great Adventure, Sarra Tsorakidis’ Ink Wash, Popistașu-Baciu’s Y and Ioana Țurcan’s The Ways we Look At the Sun. They are joined by “veterans” Ivana Mladenovic (Sorella di clausura, a new collaboration with Adi Schiop), Raluca Durbacă (Verbal Report), Andra Tarara (Interbelic Exploziv, with David Schwartz) and Alina Șerban (I Matter), among others. Last but not least, I must admit that I’m also excited about Marius Olteanu and Eugen Jebelanu’s forthcoming films – We Won’t Grow Old Together and the adaptation of Lavinia Braniște’s Interior Zero – which round off an emerging landscape that is not at all despairing, but rather, the contrary.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.