In The News
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Want to stay in the loop?
April 1, 2022
Do you want to be informed about our next endeavours? Subscribe to our newsletter via Mailchimp or follow us on Facebook or Instagram. We will keep you informed, not spammed.

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Deadline to start watching: 11:59 pm on March 31
March 30, 2022
Don’t miss the online cinematic marathon of the 16th Making Waves #Online in the entire U.S.! All film programs are available to start watching until 11:59 pm on March 31. Once a film is started, pass and ticket holders will have 48 hours to finish.

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MW16 Interviews: Corina Șuteu and Mihai Chirilov
March 28, 2022
Watch a striking conversation between Making Waves president Corina Șuteu and artistic director Mihai Chirilov! Get an insight into this year`s cinematic journey, presenting a large program of features and shorts.

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Film critic Jay Weissberg at Salon Insula 42
March 28, 2022
On March 26, Making Waves #16 ONLINE presented a special event, in conjuction with the Insula 42 salon series. Film critic Jay Weissberg joined Corina Șuteu and Mihai Chirilov for a live conversation on this year's Making Waves lineup, the evolution of Romanian cinema, and much more.

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Tickets are now ON SALE!
March 28, 2022
If you didn`t get the chance to purchase a festival pass, buy individual tickets to your favorite Romanian contemporary cinema marathon. Certain films in this series can and may sell out, so we encourage you to secure your access by purchasing either an individual ticket or a full festival pass.

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SPECIAL EVENT: Salon Insula 42 x MW16
March 22, 2022
A special event complements this year’s film selection: the next episode of the series Salon Insula 42, a conversation between film critic Jay Weissberg, Corina Șuteu and Mihai Chirilov. 

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MW16 exclusive interviews
March 21, 2022
For the 16th online edition of Making Waves, we continue to offer not just a carefully curated selection of the best in new Romanian cinema, but also an encounter with filmmakers and actors in a series of exclusive pre-recorded conversations.

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The festival trailer is online
March 4, 2022
Get a sneak peek into the films of the 16th edition, which brings together some of the best Romanian productions of the past year.

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Get your passes for MW16 online
February 18, 2022
Passes for the 16th Making Waves festival are now available for purchase, giving you access to stream all the 11 programs in the series! Individual tickets will go on sale March 25.

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Browse full lineup for MW16 #ONLINE
February 18, 2022
As promised, Making Waves returns between March 25-31, 2022 with an extended online showcase after last December’s in-person event at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Browse full lineup and get your tickets!

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MW16 continues with an ONLINE program
February 18, 2022
Making Waves #16 continues with an extensive online program. We will present an exciting program covering a selection of fiction and documentary features and shorts. More details to follow soon.

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Tickets are now on sale
November 23, 2021
Tickets for the 16th Making Waves in-person kick-off at the Jacob Burns Film Center are now on sale. Before its online premiere in early 2022, the 16th edition of Making Waves kicks off December 7-9, 2021 with a compact showcase that invites dialogue and reflection through four different and challenging films.

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Making Waves announces lineup for kick-off showcase
November 18, 2021
Before unfolding online early 2022, Making Waves 16 kicks off December 7-9, 2021 at JBFC with a compact showcase that invites to dialogue and reflection through four different and challenging films.

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Making Waves returns to the cinema
November 2, 2021
We are bringing you a new edition of Making Waves, together with our unflinching partner, the Jacob Burns Film Center. We are particularly happy to be back in the cinema this year for a three-day in person event, from December 7-9, 2021.

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16th Making Waves:
Save the date(s)
November 4, 2021
December 7-9, 2021 @ Jacob Burns Film Center
Early 2022: ONLINE

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Feature films streaming throughout the U.S. March 25-31
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Holy Father
February 24, 2022
The director and his girlfriend are faced with becoming parents. What may be the next logical step in a couple’s life here becomes the trigger for an extremely personal, much-delayed quest, as the soon-to-be father must come to terms with his long-lost father, who abandoned him when he was a kid and is now a monk on Mount Athos in Greece. Reluctant to talk at first, the ‘holy father’ slowly opens up and the dynamics between the two men take center stage, underlining the director’s fear that he’s going to turn into a bad father for lack of a first-hand role model. The road to reconciliation is long and not without resentment, but a late revelation turns what begins as a story about shattered families into one about faith and hope for a better future.

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Mikado
February 24, 2022
U.S. premiere! Remember the childhood game of pick up sticks? The screenplay of this highly intricate and engrossing drama (directed by Emanuel Pârvu, whose acting turn in the upcoming Miracle is a standout) follows the same principle, with one small incident leading to a bigger one, further setting in motion an unpredictable string of events with irreversible consequences: one day, a teenager offers her expensive necklace to a sick child in the hospital where she volunteers. Her father is certain she is lying, but by the time she proves her innocence, the damage is done and the guilt trip begins. If you enjoyed Asghar Faradi’s A Separation, you should dig Mikado.

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No Rest for the Old Lady
February 24, 2022
The unconditional bond between Emil and Titi, two old men living in a remote hamlet, is put to the test when Emil’s wife dies. Understandably, her death has left a huge void in the elderly men’s lives. Emil keeps himself busy, wanders around on his motorbike, cooks and cares for his wheelchair-bound friend, and clumsily prepares the 40-day memorial service for his late partner. His belief that God does not exist is challenged by Titi’s unwavering faith, and reaches a boiling point when Titi confesses that the old lady’s ghost moved into his house. Complete with a cathartic confrontation, this crepuscular drama with comic touches is a bittersweet ode to lifelong friendship and a deeply humane story about love and loss, fueled by two great performances.

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Otto the Barbarian
February 24, 2022
The second Romanian film featuring ‘barbarians’ in the title after Radu Jude’s follows a seventeen-year old punk who runs amok after his lover dies. Caught up in a vicious cycle created by his parents who cannot understand him, his mute and demented grandpa, and his girlfriend’s grieving mother, he gets further annoyed by the social worker investigating the tragedy. Unable to articulate his sorrow, he finds refuge in editing old videos of his girlfriend, in what feels like a desperate attempt to resurrect her—and maybe this is where the key to finally accept his guilt and move on lies. It’s an edgy film, and one of the very few local productions dealing with teenage angst, brilliantly capturing that moment when, for a young person, the world seems to have ended.

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Poppy Field
November 18, 2021
Just as his long-distance boyfriend comes to visit, Cristi (Conrad Mericoffer), a young police officer, is called in for an intervention at a movie theatre, where a homophobic group has interrupted the screening of a queer-themed film. This is the starting point for a piercing portrait of a man at odds with his sexuality, trying to find a balance between his job in a macho, hierarchical environment and his personal life as a closeted gay person. The situation worsens when one of the protesters threatens to out Cristi, triggering a complex domino effect related to his identity. First-time director Jebeleanu creates, almost in real time, a tense huis-clos drama about censorship and self-censorship in a world that makes it hard to be free if you are different.

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Unidentified
November 18, 2021
Despite mounting debts and a troubled personal life, a hot-headed police detective becomes obsessed with a hard case no one seems to care about. Ordered to put down the file, the cop goes rogue and comes up with a suspiciously convoluted plan designed to frame the apparent suspect, a security guard of Roma descent. There’s more than meets the eye in this slick and bleak neo-noir that tackles power abuse, corruption, and prejudice while slowly building up to a dark, staggering finale. Simultaneously shot by New York-based Apetri in his native town in Northern Romania, Unidentified and Miracle belong in a yet-to-be-concluded trilogy and share several key characters, but each works as a standalone piece, too.

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Us Against Us
February 24, 2022
U.S. Premiere! A common passion and a debilitating mental disorder bring the director and her father together and apart, in front of each other’s cameras. It’s an ingenious—albeit confrontational—set-up that seems to have finally triggered a frank conversation between the two about their wounded past. As the relationship unfolds, the dialogues touch upon the inability to communicate, transmission of generational traumas, their conceptions of happiness, and the stigma of mental illness. Alternating the mutual interviews with scenes of daily life, this highly emotional film becomes a personal statement from two people affected by or marked by mental disorder—a father forced to live with it and a daughter who had to grow up with a sick and often absent father.

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Wild Romania
February 24, 2022
It may be that some of the Romanian films you know and cherish—with their gritty and unflattering stories about social unrest and endemic corruption—make you think of a wild east that is unlikely to become your next travel destination. Think again! If there’s anything truly wild about Romania, it’s the savage beauty of its nature and wildlife as captured in this stunning documentary ten years in the making, including the long waits to get the right shot of an elusive animal. The resulting two hours (out of a hundred hours of raw footage) offers never-before-seen images from spectacular areas, as well as singular stories about the country’s biodiversity, narrated by the playful voice of Adrian Titieni (of Graduation fame). Book your flight now!

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You Are Ceaușescu to Me
February 24, 2022
U.S. Premiere! This is one of the most unusual offerings in Making Waves’ recent history: a bold cinematic work somewhere in the experimental space between fiction and documentary. Surprisingly, this intriguing oddity is less about the titular dictator and his criminal ruling, and more about his early years as an aspiring communist, as reenacted by a bunch of non-professional millennials who were picked for the cast in a vacant warehouse. The ‘actors’ enter the game bearing no preconceived ideas of the dictatorship, and the more they get in character, the more they reveal about themselves during the breaks. Shot in striking black and white, this meta-film creates a collective portrait of a young generation that seems lost in the shades of grey of an ever-changing world.

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New Romanian Shorts @ MW16
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Cradle
February 25, 2022
The classic lullaby song performed by legendary Maria Tănase gets an unofficial yet powerful music video with this dark and intriguing black and white animation about the damaging effects of domestic abuse and alcoholism.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 1

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Intermission for Autonomous Vacuum and the End of the World
February 25, 2022
Outside, the world is ending, more or less like in Don’t Look Up! Inside a house, a cleaning lady and a stranger in a bathrobe spend their last moments sharing a common passion, in what feels like the perfect happy ending.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 1

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The Mouse B
February 25, 2022
Seeking to overturn Darwin’s theory, a psychology professor is about to prove that mice are capable of empathy. But the miracle doesn’t last long, bringing down the scientist’s belief in the utopia of equality.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 1

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Still
February 25, 2022
Two young parents are emotionally stuck and grow more distant by the day after their four-year-old son dies. You can literally feel the grief in the air in this impressive one-shot that quietly suggests only time can heal wounds.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 1

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Summer Planning
February 25, 2022
A young boy’s dream of going to summer camp with his friends after the school year ends is threatened by his parents’ imminent divorce in this touching study of a couple in crisis and adults’ responsibilities.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 1

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31 Hours
February 25, 2022
An overworked surgeon who has just come out of a 31-hour shift takes on a last minute emergency, but things end badly in this tense drama about guilt, deontological ethics, and the endemic corruption of the public health system.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 2

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I Am Dorin
February 25, 2022
In this wild and humorous tale, a young man from the countryside accepts a sum of money in exchange for taking a bachelor's degree exam in someone else’s stead, and has one night—and what a night it is!— to get in character.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 2

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No Singing After 8
February 25, 2022
What happens when your heartbeats are no longer in harmony? You invite another couple over for dinner and let yourself go with the song's flow, ignoring the rule in the title. What you get is a delightful musical about love and marriage.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 2

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Together
February 25, 2022
A boy who lives with his father prepares to go on a holiday with his mother. It’s a deceptively simple story, whose microscopic details speak volumes about broken families and the impossibility of bringing them back together.

Part of New Romanian Shorts - Program 2

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MW16: Bonus Materials
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MW16 Interviews: Șerban Pavlu on MIKADO
March 21, 2022
Șerban Pavlu talks about Emanuel Pârvu's second feature MIKADO, their previous collaboration on MEDA AND THE NOT SO BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS, and being one of the most recognizable actors in contemporary Romanian cinema. Here's a glimpse.

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MW16 Interviews: Ioana Bugarin on OTTO THE BARBARIAN
March 21, 2022
Get a sneak peek at the conversation between Making Waves president Corina Șuteu and actress Ioana Bugarin on OTTO THE BARBARIAN, directed by Ruxandra Ghițescu.

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MW16 Interviews: Eugen Jebeleanu on POPPY FIELD
March 21, 2022
Get a sneak peek at the conversation between Making Waves artistic director Mihai Chirilov and director Eugen Jebeleanu on his feature debut, POPPY FIELD. 

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MW16 Interviews: On This Edition’s Lineup
March 15, 2022
Get an insight into this year's cinematic journey in this exclusive conversation between Making Waves president Corina Șuteu and artistic director Mihai Chirilov.

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MW16 Recommends: MIRACLE and UNIDENTIFIED
January 9, 2022
Richard Peña introduces two films by Bogdan George Apetri featured in the 16th Making Waves #InPerson edition, presented in U.S. Premiere, and N.Y. Premiere, respectively.

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MW16 Recommends: POPPY FIELD
January 9, 2022
Richard Peña introduces POPPY FIELD, a film by Eugen Jebeleanu, presented in the 16th Making Waves #InPerson

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MW16 Recommends: ÎNTREGALDE
January 9, 2022
Richard Peña introduces ÎNTREGALDE, a film by Radu Muntean, presented in the 16th Making Waves #InPerson edition.

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MW16 Kick-Off In Person (December 7-9, 2021)
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Poppy Field
November 18, 2021
Just as his long-distance boyfriend comes to visit, Cristi (Conrad Mericoffer), a young police officer, is called in for an intervention at a movie theatre, where a homophobic group has interrupted the screening of a queer-themed film. This is the starting point for a piercing portrait of a man at odds with his sexuality, trying to find a balance between his job in a macho, hierarchical environment and his personal life as a closeted gay person. The situation worsens when one of the protesters threatens to out Cristi, triggering a complex domino effect related to his identity. First-time director Jebeleanu creates, almost in real time, a tense huis-clos drama about censorship and self-censorship in a world that makes it hard to be free if you are different.

Read More ⟶
Unidentified
November 18, 2021
Despite mounting debts and a troubled personal life, a hot-headed police detective becomes obsessed with a hard case no one seems to care about. Ordered to put down the file, the cop goes rogue and comes up with a suspiciously convoluted plan designed to frame the apparent suspect, a security guard of Roma descent. There’s more than meets the eye in this slick and bleak neo-noir that tackles power abuse, corruption, and prejudice while slowly building up to a dark, staggering finale. Simultaneously shot by New York-based Apetri in his native town in Northern Romania, Unidentified and Miracle belong in a yet-to-be-concluded trilogy and share several key characters, but each works as a standalone piece, too.

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Întregalde
November 18, 2021
Three middle-aged do-gooders get stranded while taking part in their traditional end-of-the-year humanitarian trip, driving an SUV along the mountainous dirt roads of the Romanian village of Întregalde. Blame it on the damn unpaved trail, or the lonely old man they wanted to help by taking him to the sawmill, where he supposedly works. When the cold sets in and the sawmill proves abandoned, the trio is forced to spend the night stuck with the senile old man and find their ideas about empathy and charity seriously challenged. Although set on a Blair Witch Project-like territory, the heart of this intriguing modern fable previously shown at the NYFF is elsewhere – namely in the true meaning of one’s good deed.

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Miracle
November 18, 2021
U.S. Premiere! Director Bogdan Apetri and actress Ioana Bugarin in person
A 19-year old nun (promising newcomer Ioana Bugarin) sneaks out of an isolated monastery to attend to an urgent matter in the nearby town. Seemingly unable to solve her problems, she rushes to return to the convent, but things go awfully wrong on her way back. In a perfectly mirrored structure, the story switches to the police detective who investigates against the clock, collecting clues and facing twisted revelations as he tries to understand what happened to her. Employing a realistic approach and told through suspensefully unbroken takes, Apetri’s revenge thriller touches on spirituality, prompting viewers to ask themselves if there’s still space in ourtimes for something sense and science can’t explain.

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Visual Diaries
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Past editions
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15th Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema
February 5, 2021
Feb 18-24, 2021 | ONLINE IN THE U.S.
Co-presented with the Jacob Burns Film Center

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14th Making Waves: “The Romanians” Retrospective
September 20, 2019
Nov 2019 - Mar 2020 @ Film Forum & U.S. Tour
May 2020 - 2021: ONLINE ON DEMAND

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14th Making Waves: New Releases
June 17, 2020
Dec 5-10, 2019
@ Jacob Burns Film Center

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13th Making Waves
September 26, 2019
Nov 26-Dec 5, 2018
@ BAM & Jacob Burns Film Center

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12th Making Waves
September 26, 2019
Nov 30-Dec 7, 2017
@ BAMcinématek & Jacob Burns Film Center

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11th Making Waves
September 26, 2019
Dec 1-8, 2016
@ Jacob Burns Film Center

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10th Making Waves
September 26, 2019
Dec 2-8, 2015
@ Film Society of Lincoln Center & Jacob Burns Film Center

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9th Making Waves
September 26, 2019
Dec 4-10, 2014
@ Film Society of Lincoln Center & Jacob Burns Film Center

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8th Making Waves
September 26, 2019
Nov 29 - Dec 10, 2013
@ Film Society of Lincoln Center & Jacob Burns Film Center

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7th Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema
September 26, 2019
Nov 29 - Dec 5, 2012
@ Film Society of Lincoln Center

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Past Editions 2006 – 2011
September 26, 2019
Take a stroll down memory lane. MAKING WAVES: New Romanian Cinema continues, in a new configuration, the Romanian Film Festival in NYC, initiated in 2006 and chaired by reputed cultural entrepreneur and cultural policy expert and trainer Corina Suteu, under the artistic direction of Mihai Chirilov.

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Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema is the longstanding Romanian Film Festival in New York. Initiated and presented by Film ETC Association, in partnership with leading U.S. organizations, including the Jacob Burns Film Center (since 2013), Film Forum (since 2109), BAM (since 2017), or the Film Society of Lincoln Center (2011-2015).

MakingWaves © 2012-2022

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