Based on four recent films that have gathered impressive numbers of viewers (both in theaters and online), we analyze the new landscape that has emerged in Romanian cinema and what it tells us about class, money, and women.

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It’s already a self-evident truth: a new wave of popular cinema has recently emerged in Romania, with droves of spectators ballooning the box office numbers to a high they hadn’t seen in decades, and roundly defeating all the gloomy predictions of those that regularly herald the “death of cinemas as we know them”, who’d claimed that the pandemic had been the death blow to film theaters. In 2022, Romanian cinema not only had multiple record-breaking audiences and box office figures, but also a historically high amount of production: the Gopo Awards have just announced that a record number of local feature films are eligible to be nominated for its 2023 edition, with no less than 31 (!) local feature films.

It’s hard to put one’s finger on the precise cause of this (box office) renaissance of local film production. Could it be the break-up of the New Romanian Cinema movement and the loss of its hegemonic role (a paradoxical one for a movement with niche characteristics, as Andrei Gorzo noted in Things that cannot be said otherwise)? The decline in public trust towards the idea of international festival success, coupled with the fact that this is no longer necessarily a desirable career for some filmmakers? Did the endless discussions about the lack of a Romanian popular cinema finally bear fruit? Or could it be the emergence of massive players such as Global Records (an associate of Vidra Productions, the company behind most of these titles) in the market, players that no longer depend on funding doled out by the National Cinema Center of Romania, and are therefore solely guided by profit? Maybe it’s a bit of everything – or maybe it’s just the fact that the hard-to-crack “recipe” has only just been discovered.

A bit of context. Why now?

It’s not as if such films haven’t been attempted in the last decade or so – but their success was modest compared to what we’re witnessing now. There are plenty of local filmmakers who have courted mainstream audiences in the past: from prolific but peripheral auteurs (Iura Luncașu, par excellence), to those who have targeted audiences inclined towards cheesy dramas (Serge Ioan Celibidachi), those who are passionate about local historical figures and moments (Toma Enache, Marius Th. Barna), or those who tried their hand at genre cinema (such as Ovidiu Georgescu, whose The Last Incubus is one of the funniest B movies of the last decade) – they all somehow missed the main target: bringing a huge audience into theaters.Several strategies have been attempted in the past: casting pop stars in lead roles (Tudor Chirilă in Live, Smiley in A Simple Film or The Godmother), wooing teenage audiences (Kiss Her!, Selfie, or Oh, Ramona!, by Camelia Popa and Cristina Iacob), adapting fundamental works in Romanian literature (Two Lottery Tickets, The Moromete Family II), and even narcissistic projects (see, for example, the insane film made by the businessman behind the Spartan chain of fast food restaurants, Ștefan Mandachi).

But nobody could predict who will be the real kingmaker of Romanian popular film would be Matei Dima, a.k.a. BRomania – a Youtuber and stand-up comedian, as well as a video director/producer (in the music video business), who has taken all this experience and turned it towards cinema in recent years.

The result is visible from outer space: his name appears on the credits of the biggest box office hits of the last 3 years – the two 5gang films (Another Kind of Christmas and The Camp), Miami Bici, Romina VTM, and the colossus Teambuilding, the central film of this new phenomenon. How did he do it? Beyond the large audience he had already amassed thanks to his online presence, Dima comes with that something his predecessors had failed to grasp: a precise understanding of the type of product that the broad audience – for whom the American blockbuster is the pinnacle of cinema – desires, and the know-how to implement at a local level. And as he stated in an interview with Adevărul, he is “a big consumer of American culture”; plus he also has on his side the fact that, after all, the phenomenon of influencers entering the film market is global.

BRomânia is at the top of a small popular film empire at the moment (via Vidra Productions, the company behind most of these films), thus also setting a model for those who wish to emulate him: another online sketch filmmaker who was behind a box office success in 2022 was Mircea “Bravo” Popa, with Mirciulică. But not all the people behind these films come from the online sphere – a fact that is also visible in the films, themselves. Of all these recent titles, Taxi Drivers (dir. Bogdan Theodor Olteanu) – was shot, edited, and released at a national level in less than six months. It stands out not just in terms of the quality – of the script, which is based on the eponymous play staged in 2018 at the Apollo111 theater, but especially in terms of acting, as the cast is mainly composed of actors with extensive experience in cinema and theatre – but also in terms of discursive/political stakes: analyzing the effects of financial precariousness and harsh working conditions on its protagonists. In contrast, the acting in Mirciulică is a nightmare, despite its secondary cast of actors who work at the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca.

All of these films are comedies, and their main engine is dialogue – the cinematography is a secondary concern in many of them, a mere visual prop for what might otherwise be radio plays or podcasts.

Recently, Cătălin Olaru wrote about the emergence of what he called the vlogger cinematic universe: “the main constant of this vlogger cinematic universe is the usage of short-ranged humor, which eliminates the risk of jokes missing their intended targets. However limited the audiences‘ capacity to keep focused may be, it’s unlikely that any of these back-and-forths buried within the dialogue or the editing style of Dima and Selly’s films will pass by unnoticed.”

Indeed, almost all of these films are comedies, and their main engine is dialogue – the cinematography is a secondary concern in many of them, a mere visual prop for what might otherwise be radio plays or podcasts. And, of course, they abound in swear words – but that’s hardly any news: the “fault” of vulgar language has been pointed out towards Romanian cinema since the nineties; nor can I say that I’m in any way concerned with this particular issue. I say that we should take a peek beyond this style of humor – and try to understand why this revival of Romanian film attendance is happening in the first place. But first, a few thoughts about Teambuilding.

Teambuilding. Fresh stereotypes

I won’t dwell too much on the already well-known plot of Matei Dima’s (who also plays the film’s central character, team manager Emil) Teambuilding, the biggest box office success in Romania since the nineties, with over a million spectators, according to Cinemagia. It’s (also) a film that has been the subject of a scandal that stretched over entire days on Facebook – starting from the disgust that some right-wing opinion leaders expressed at the perceived “vulgarity” of the film, and defended by a part of the left-wing opinion leaders as a critique of late capitalism that is packaged as a mainstream film.

I’d much rather like to look at how the film combines an old successful recipe of Romanian cinema – the comedy with regional stereotypes (Nea Mărin – the typical southerner, the Ardelenii series) – with a recent need: that of representing the new realities of the Romanian workplace (given that almost 30% of Romanian employees work in multinationals, the potential audience is enormous) and the Anglo-Saxon-inspired culture of these environments.

Teambuilding is a battle royale (quite literally, in the end) of Romanian regional stereotypes with a modern twist. Southerners are represented as neo-alcoholics pulled straight out of The Hangover (2009), eager to teach their brethren how to perform cunnilingus. The Transsylvanians are slow of speech and movement (the easiest stereotype to imitate – as the film’s final twist will prove), but also moral fashion victims of new-age & mindfulness trends. And the Moldovans are shes, i.e., a pack of Beautiful Women© with no individual identity, solely existing as a collective entity (except for the obligatory love interest for the protagonist), only good for slow-motion shots focused on their breasts and asses. This regional aspect has been quite intensely commented on in the online sphere, but it has been done so from the false-universal position of the Bucharester, the avatar of the “ordinary Romanian”. However, if we turn the magnifying glass back onto those from the capital, we can find a patchwork of valid stereotypes: in Teambuilding, Bucharesters are ill-mannered and rude, vulgar, agitated, anxious, moody, but simultaneously lackluster, lazy, dumb, and entitled.

What’s interesting is that, as much as one might ironize corporate culture, when it comes to the mores and English-ized language of the characters (and successfully so – striking right at the euphemistic heart of this double-speak: such as the recurring “kind reminder” gag), on the level of set design and materiality, the film perfectly aligns itself with this branding-dominated culture: its space is colonized by the same kinds of companies that are ubiquitous in these spaces in reality. Let’s call it corporate realism: if in Dante Lăzărescu’s house, the modest bag of Băneasa flour is a main fixture on his kitchen table, in Dima’s universe we discover Aqua Carpatica water, Julius Meinl coffee, Hop Hooligans beer, Tazz deliveries, and Hygenium napkins. Some would call it targeted sponsorship deals. Others (myself included) would call it an uncritical mimetic assimilation and representation of these surroundings – just see the dramaturgically pointless skit structured around a character who plays the roulette at Vlad Casino.

The film combines an old successful recipe of Romanian cinema – the comedy with regional stereotypes (Nea Mărin – the typical southerner, the Ardelenii series) – with a recent need: that of representing the new realities of the Romanian workplace (given that almost 30% of Romanian employees work in multinationals, the potential audience is enormous) and the Anglo-Saxon-inspired culture of these environments.

So, is Teambuilding really a critique of capitalism? Somewhat. And it’s ending is the best indication in that sense: Emil, now hooked up with the kinky Moldovan lady, has set up his own IT services company, hiring his former team from PLM Global there, and gives hints that he has taken out a loan from the bank – thus marking his entry into the symbolic order of capital, both a capitulation (in front of the banking system and the modern precariat it profits from) and a perpetuation of the same hollow system, but this time around from a position of strength, which is, of course, something good within this economy of means. The exploited become the exploiters, the hustle goes on. Long live capitalism!

Small Treatise on Petty-bourgeois Fears and Neuroses

If there is one thematic element running throughout all of these films–especially Teambuilding, Mirciulică (dir. Cristian Iliușan) and Weddings, baptisms, and funerals (dir. Alexandru Lustig) but also, to some extent, in Taxi Drivers -, then it’s that of the fears and neuroses of the Romanian middle class: the quality of one’s job, personal income, real estate ownership, and, finally, sex.

After all, this middle class represents the target audience of these films–besides, multiplex tickets are relatively expensive (in comparison to the prices of independent theaters, where these kinds of films are not often shown), and a Netflix subscription is not exactly cheap for Romanian pockets, and are, as such, a symbolic barrier for people with low incomes (see also the classist discourse that targeted the release of Romina VTM, whose target audience was slightly different). Except for Mirciulică, which is set in the small town of Gherla (but shot in a way that it looks like any other small town in the country), most of these films are set in a Bucharest which isn’t signaled as such. Rather, the town acts as an umbrella for a handful of spaces that are more plausible in the context of the capital: corporate buildings, fancy restaurants, and apartments with IKEA furniture.

Ironically enough, Taxi Drivers has been criticized for not “looking” like it was filmed in Bucharest, but the locations in the film are as distinctive as can be (for example, the La Rechinu canteen, which is a gathering point for taxi drivers in reality, too), and the drivers’ routes (as signaled by the script) are visibly accurate in the background.

Let’s take a look at each of these neuroses: starting with jobs, which are the central point in Teambuilding, Mirciulică, and Taxi Drivers. In all three, the jobs are portrayed as (humiliatingly) simple, below the skills and training/educational level of the protagonists, and the overall perspective on the Romanian job market is highly depressing–you’re either stuck in a position of exploitation, where you may have ended up out of desperation (like Liviu in Taxi Drivers), become an exploiter yourself (Emil, in Teambuilding), or you altogether give up the idea that your college degree is of any use and start a small business, the Holy Grail of the middle class (Mirciulică, who abandons his dreams of becoming a prosecutor after a stint at a politically controlled sanitation firm, and opens up a food truck). As for the portrayal of the colleagues, it’s as simplistic as it gets: if you work for “the state”, you’re surrounded by political hires and mistresses who are just sitting idly, while always risking a “political hit”, whereas if you work for “private companies”, your bosses, sorry, managers are Machiavellian control freaks (see especially Nicoleta from Teambuilding) and your entry-level colleagues live their lives on autopilot, lacking in any kind of aspirations.

Next, we have capital and ownership. Beyond the fact that rents, bank loans, and characters living with their parents are ubiquitous, the most symptomatic film in this regard is Weddings, baptisms, and funerals, the feature-length fiction debut of (tele-)theater director Alexandru Lustig, which was one of the most streamed Romanian films on Netflix in recent weeks. In the center of the film, we have Cosmin (Șerban Pavlu, in one of his flattest performances), whose dream of becoming a little real estate mogul in the mid-2000s is being turned upside down–but not so much by the global economic crisis (and what a missed opportunity to discuss this moment in recent history!), but by his neighbor, who owns a noisy event hall and is (of course) hand in hand with the local police. Briefly put, this is one of the upper-middle-class’s most paroxysmal fears: not so much the idea of having made a failed investment, but that of the disruption of the sacrosanct space of private property.

As for sex…

Regarding Women: starting from the legs

Among the few techniques of visual grammar one can find in these films, alongside the shot-countershot and slow-motion techniques, one more stands out: the pan, whether handheld or operated by crane or drone. And it’s often employed in a quite particular way–and that’s to introduce a female protagonist, who is shot from the ankles up. In Weddings... this kind of shot appears in the very first minute of the film, introducing the character of Cosmin’s wife, who, throughout the film, will be defined mainly in terms of her sexual neuroses (as I will discuss below), and in Mirciulică, the technique appears when the adulterous wife of the protagonist’s boss appears for the first time. This latter character will be driven by Mircea around Cluj (for shopping and various other activities) in a series of humiliations that he has to endure at work and in his everyday life, and which are predominantly emasculating in nature. (Besides, the film is constructed from a series of events in which the protagonist is repeatedly humiliated and emasculated.)

What Laura Mulvey wrote 50 (!) years ago about the scopophilic gaze still applies to a T: the presence of the female body on screen “her visual presence tends to work against the development of a storyline, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation (…) the sexual impact of the performing woman takes the film into a no-man’s-land outside its own time and space” (also see: the Moldovan girls in Teambuilding).

What stands out as a predominant model of representation in these films is that of the sexually frustrated woman–in relation, of course, to the male protagonist: female protagonists who, beyond any possible nuance and with varying results in the narrative end-game, have in common the fact that they’re having far less sex than they would like, and the sex that they desire is, obviously, that of the male lead. It’s something that seems incredibly ridiculous once it’s put into words, but it says a lot about the profound sexualization of female characters in this handful of films. Even in the case of the virginal girl that Mirciulică falls in love with, it’s obvious from the very first shot of her face that her ultimate fate is to land in the protagonist’s bed.

What stands out as a predominant model of representation in these films is that of the sexually frustrated woman

In Taxi Drivers, Victoria’s dissatisfaction with her lack of intimacy with Liviu is a means to explore the alienating effect that these hard jobs have on chauffeurs’ personal lives–and as a point from which other dissatisfactions come to the surface, even if, overall, the sexual argument is the central one, thus casting a shadow over everything else. In Weddings…, on the other hand, we have a female character whose characterization is cruelly misogynistic: Cosmin’s wife seems to exist solely as a recurrent punchline (in a film that is a collection of repetitive sketches, anyways). Nearly every single one of her scenes depicts her–mostly unsuccessful–attempts to sleep with her husband, a dehumanizing running gag that is primitive in its sexism, reducing her to the status of a mere sexual object. And the most incredible aspect of this is the fact that she has close to no objections to this state of affairs.

As for the portrayal of queer people, except for Taxi Drivers (quite unsurprisingly, given Olteanu’s previous two films), it’s “admirable, even sublime, one might say, but it is sorely lacking”(to quote Caragiale): it’s a mere gag between male characters. As Olaru notes, homophobia is a constant in this universe, at least implicitly, given their focus on the protagonists’ performativity of masculinity–but it’s used subversively in Taxi Drivers (the only film actually to feature a queer character), where the protagonist Lică starts by espousing the most basal homophobic statements (“If I see one, I’ll barf”) and ends up by seeking the approval and validation of a gay passenger.

The Thing about Trap Music (or Why I Love Bad Bunny)

To limit ourselves to the local field in this discussion would be a mistake–because, after all, we’re dealing with a handful of films that emulate the American model, which, as said above, is an ultimate goal. But there would be one more thing at stake, which is not at all insignificant: trap music. At first glance, this cinematic phenomenon’s connection to global cultural phenomena is only reinforced by the strong connection between a handful of artists working within this genre and the films of this recent wave of popular productions (especially 5gang, but also other trappers featuring on the soundtracks, such as Killa Fonic or Gheboasa), with a small detour through the area of manele (see Jean de la Craiova’s cameos in Weddings… ) and nineties rap (Spike in Taxi Drivers and Teambuilding, BUG Mafia). But a closer look–especially at the lyrics and politics of these songs–confirms once more that we’re still a long way from catching up. And who else to relate to in such a discussion than to the reigning prince of the genre, the most streamed artist on the planet, fashion icon, and standard-bearer of non-toxic masculinity in pop culture? Or, in short, to the new Elvis: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – a.k.a. Bad Bunny.

Without going into too much detail, Bad Bunny (who made his film debut last year, starring alongside Brad Pitt in Bullet Train) represents a paradigm shift in rap and reggaeton culture, both of which are profoundly macho: sure, many of his songs deal with erotic and romantic desire, and have lyrics that can be seen as objectifying (Shorty, tienes un culo bien grande), but you don’t find offensive descriptions of women in his songs, nor generalizations and mass portrayals (even in Tití Me Preguntó, a song from the perspective of a character with countless girlfriends, they are treated as individuals).

For a phenomenon that tends to adopt the values (primarily in terms of production and profit, but also in regards to predominant themes) of mainstream American cinema, this newly-born Romanian popular cinema is still way behind its aspirational model.

Moreover, Bad Bunny not only talks in interviews about topics such as homo- and transphobia or gender violence, but actively incorporates them into his music: Andrea is a tribute to a woman who was murdered in Puerto Rico, Yo Perrea Sola takes the perspective of a chick who wants to be left alone when she dances (and in the video, Martínez appears in drag), and Solo de Mi, another song written from the perspective of a female character, where he discusses the feelings of a woman reclaiming her independence after leaving a toxic relationship.

Compare that to the lyrics of some of the rap and trap songs on the soundtracks of some of the films mentioned above–which speak for themselves:

•   “I only take rides with nice p*ssies / We don’t take the ugly ones, we’re the real deal” (Spike, Taxi Drivers)

•  “Your daughter’s a h*e, your wife’s dumb (…) / I f*cked your secretary and your apartment/ Your daughter’s, your lover’s from the city center too” (Killa Fonic and Gheboasa, What’d I do boss?, Teambuilding)

•   “I know secrets about your chick that shake me up / One fucks her the other drives her around / I don’t have a license, so who’s the one driving her?” (YNY Sebi, The Camp)

Sure, not all Romanian trap songs are misogynistic, but the fact that these songs are used on their soundtracks, or even as promotional singles for these films only reinforces the presumption that these films operate with concepts that are if not outright misogynistic and objectifying (after all, women are regarded either as sexual commodities or as “ugly” / “stupid” in these lyrics), then at least patriarchal when it comes to constructing their female (as well as male) characters. Or even if they don’t explicitly operate with them (see Taxi Drivers, where a sexy, debonair dispatcher emerges as a possible stand-in for Victoria – and even though her character isn’t flat, her status as a temptress is still her main attribute), they tolerate them enough to be fine with associating themselves with this kind of lyrics.

The absence of a star who operates on the same model as Bad Bunny – because, after all, you wouldn’t even have anyone to compare him to, locally – with his boy-next-door image (see YHLQMDLG album promo clips) and his progressive messages, denotes not only a general climate that has lagged behind global trends but also the fact that his kind of messages is not yet seen as marketable in the wider Romanian entertainment market.

Conclusions (of sorts)

For a phenomenon that tends to adopt the values (primarily in terms of production and profit, but also in regards to predominant themes) of mainstream American cinema, this newly-born Romanian popular cinema is still way behind its aspirational model. Although both share a simplifying vision of the realities of the working field and the structure of their respective societies, what certainly separates them is not only the massive difference in budgets and complexity of visual grammar but especially in the way that they portray female characters. Whether the latter will change remains to be seen, but I must admit I have my doubts about it.

The fact is that the wave is far from over: there are plenty of upcoming films that court mainstream audiences, such as The Action Gang (starring Dima), Miami Bici 2, The Perfect Escape (dir. Cristina Iacob, her first English-language production) and The eggs, the French and the Transsylvanians (dir. Tudor Botezatu). They will join the ranks of other such productions that have been recently released in cinemas: Ramon by Jesus del Cerro, starring television icon Pavel Bartos, and Two Hearts, a drama in which the main roles are played by musicians (Iuliana Beregoi, Connect-R).

And others are sure to follow, a wave of copy-cats that will chase for the same surreal box office numbers, but who I fear won’t be asking themselves too many questions about the form and content of their films along the way – and that is simply the nature of this kind of race.

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.