The Exit of the Trains(RJ Retro)
Debates have long swirled about how cinema could and should remember and respect those who perished during the Holocaust. But what could be more appropriate than returning the humanity to all those…
Z32(RJ Retro)
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what your country can do to you. That’s the question filmmaker Avi Mograbi has spent his whole career contemplating about, as he explores the misdeeds…
Scarred Hearts(RJ Retro)
Summer, 1937. Emmanuel, a witty but pallid man in his 20s, is admitted to a sanatorium by the Black Sea to receive treatment for spinal tuberculosis. The suitably serene environment and the comforting…
The Dead Nation(RJ Retro)
With this found-footage film, Radu Jude fills in the historical backdrop on which Scarred Hearts unfolded – that is, the parochial mindset and spiralling xenophobia which eventually led to the…
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn(RJ Retro)
The title’s not merely clickbait: Radu Jude’s latest outing, which begins with a warning of “extraordinary explicit sexual content”, does what it says on the tin, starting off with a…
Sicilia!(RJ Retro)
Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub are well-known for their penchant for adapting existing literary texts. With Sicilia!, they transformed Elio Vittorini’s anti-fascist novel Conversations in…
The Cruise(RJ Retro)
An ensemble drama at its most gripping and a satire at its highest political order – the latter being an impressive feat, given the heavy-handed censorship regime in Romania during the communist era…
Everybody in Our Family(RJ Retro)
Marius, a divorced man in his 30s, wants one thing and one thing only: to pick his toddler up from his ex-wife’s apartment and for a day of dad-daughter bonding on the seaside. Nothing will stop him…
“I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians”(RJ Retro)
As performances go, stage director Mariana Marin’s latest is as audacious as any. Her plan is to stage, in a large public square in Bucharest, a “stylised, compressed and theatrical”…
Aferim!(RJ Retro)
“Aferim” is an Ottoman-Romanian equivalent to “bravo”, and nearly everybody in Radu Jude’s third feature says it one way or another. The irony is how there’s nothing worth all that…
Respite / A Story from Africa(RJ Retro)
Movie Name: Respite
Uppercase Print(RJ Retro)
Radu Jude has long professed his interest in appropriating existing texts and images for his work. With Uppercase Print, he has upped his ante by adapting a play based entirely on the secret police…
An Unforgettable Summer(RJ Retro)
While known more widely as British actor Kristin Scott Thomas’s international breakthrough, An Unforgettable Summer is also an important milestone for Romanian cinema. A beautiful film set amidst…
The Happiest Girl in the World(RJ Retro)
Having served his apprenticeship as an assistant director on The Death of Mr Lazarescu, the film which propelled the Romanian New Wave into international prominence, Radu Jude’s first feature bears…