At the end of September, after a two-month long break and some holiday, sun, heat and laziness, #weekendfilms returns and invites you to the movie theatres.

This weekend we have not one, not two, but three fresh new Romanian films which invite us in the cinemas.

1. We start with Breaking News (dir. Iulia Rugină, drama), a film that just won a prize at the Karlovy Vary Festival. Andi Vasluianu is a journalist that is obliged to make a reportage in memory of his DOP who passed away tragically. He plays together with the 15-year-old teenager Voica Oltean who won the Special Jury Mention at Karlovy Vary for her first role on the big screen. Three days before Christmas in a small city near the Black Sea coast, the journalist tries to recreate his colleague’s life through the eyes of those who survived him.

Iulia Rugină: “The first draft of the script was written in 2007 right after I graduated. The script was rewritten several times since then. We started the shooting in 2014 working with the 14^th version of the script with an already very different story. It is a screenplay that changed a lot because it’s been a long time since its first draft; somehow, it evolved together with us.”

Today, September 21^st, the film’s preview can be seen in the presence of the team at Elvire Popescu Cinema, starting at 8:30 PM. You can find the tickets here.
Breaking News will be screened in the Romanian cinemas starting with September 29.

2. We continue with One Step Behind the Seraphim (dir. Daniel Sandu; drama) which enters cinemas on Friday, September 22. The film tells the story of Gabriel, a teenager who wishes to become a priest and goes to an Orthodox theological seminary. Firstly, he tries to adapt, but eventually he realises that the system is corrupted and abusive. Shortly after, he and other three students are considered a problem by the school’s council.

The film can be seen on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Movieplex Cinema, Grand Cinema & More, Hollywood Multiplex, Cinema City Cotroceni, Union Cinematheque and Romanian Peasant Museum Cinema.

3. We end up with Perfect Health (dir. Anca Damian; drama) where Andrei (Anghel Damian) is a young lawyer with mixed feelings about his father who is a respected judge, Toma (Vlad Ivanov). The suspicious death of the father will determine the young man to start an investigation on his own, reproducing every step of his dad’s last day of life.

You can catch the film on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and Hollywood Multiplex, Cinema City Cotroceni, Grand Cinema & More and at Eforie Cinematheque on Sunday, starting at 3:00 PM.

As you already expected, we also checked the TV and online schedule for those who don’t want to leave home this weekend:

1. For those who want to start the weekend early in the morning with a relaxing film, we recommend you Alice in Wonderland (dir: Tim Burton; adventure, fantastic). Tim Burton and Johnny Depp teamed up again to tell the classic story of Alice. The unique interpretation of the story, the cast and the impressive collection of costumes and stage design represent true reasons of delight. The movie won two Oscar awards in 2011 for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design and was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and five BAFTA Prizes.

• This film marks the seventh time Johnny Depp works under the direction of Tim Burton, and the sixth time for Helena Bonham Carter.
• Both the Red Queen and White Queen’s palaces were designed to resemble Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World.
• Despite the fact that there have been many other Alice in Wonderland films, Tim Burton has said he never felt an emotional connection to it and always thought it was a series of some girl wandering around from one crazy character to another. So with this film, he attempted to create a framework, an emotional grounding, which he felt he never really had seen in any version before. The director said that this was the challenge for him – to make Alice feel like a story rather than a sequence of events.

The film can be seen on Friday, September 22, on HBO and HBO HD at 9:45 AM and on DIVA at 9:00 PM.

2. Joy (dir. David O. Russell; biography); the lead actress is Jennifer Lawrence who plays the part of Joy Mangano, the housewife who invented all sorts of appliances to ease domestic work. Joy Mangano is a permanent presence on Home Shopping Network presenting several inventions. But, the Miracle Mop is her ticket to glory and success.

There is no such #weekendfilms without the fun facts, so here are the three most interesting ones:

• Diane Ladd was decided to be the narrator of the story but after she had already filmed all her scenes.
• Virginia Madsen’s character, Terry, is a combination of several people in Joy Mangano’s life.
• Jennifer Lawrence wore wigs and hairpieces during the shooting. While doing Joy’s haircut scene, she accidentally cut some of her own hair as well as the fake hairpieces. The whole haircut scene was done in one take.

You can catch the film on Saturday, September 23, at 10:35PM on HBO 2 and HBO 2 HD.

3. Ana, mon amour (dir. Călin Peter Netzer; drama) is the analysis of a love story, an atypical incursion which captures the most tense and delicate moments of a couple’s evolution. In 2017 the feature film received the Silver Bear Prize for the excellent artistic contribution. The prize was awarded to Dana Bunescu at Berlin. Diana Cavallioti has the leading role in this film. A while ago we talked to her about her part in Ana, mon amour, about the start of her career as an actress, about rules, directors and much more. You can find the full interview here.

Ana, mon amour can be watched on Sunday, September 24, starting at 8:00 PM, on HBO and HBO HD.

Romina Banu

Photographer and editor; she co-founded Dissolved Magazine together with Melissa. For Films in Frame she gathers film and TV series recommendations for lazy weekends and she writes about interesting projects from the film industry. Other than that, she likes traveling, chilling with her cats and sleeping.