A NATO gun shipment supervised by an American officer that’s scheduled to cross Romania via train during the Kosovo war of the late 1990s is blocked by a stubborn rural station official who objects to the lack of accompanying documents. What follows is an epic farce of carnivalesque proportions, touching on cultural misunderstandings, corruption, vengeance and the American dream. “Its themes are serious, but they are addressed with a playful exuberance,” wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times back in 2007. Today, revisiting Nemescu’s feature debut, released after his death in 2006, one thing’s for sure: The film’s seduction and electrifying rock’n’roll vitality – far removed from the stripped-down realism of most of New Romanian Cinema’s big hits – remain unaltered.

Actor Andi Vasluianu in person (Nov 21 @ Film Forum)

The Oak is an absorbing, complicated black comedy about Romania at the end of the Ceauşescu regime. A young schoolteacher named Nela embarks on a spiritual journey following the death of her father, a former government official, whose ashes she carries with her in a coffee jar. During her wanderings through grotesque and often violent surroundings, she meets Mitică. The couple, like Tristan and Isolde at the gates of the Orient, cannot pursue their love without disruption. A series of events – floods, pollution, Mitică’s arrest, military maneuvers and massacres – split up our heroes, and reveal a backdrop in which nothing works properly and everything seems to be falling apart. NEW 4K RESTORATION

Actress Maia Morgenstern in person (Mar 13, Lightbox Film Center Philadelphia)

The film that, for many people, signaled the emergence of the new Romanian cinema, Cristi Puiu’s second feature was a revelation at Cannes 2005, where it took top prize in the Un Certain Regard section. A sardonic, darkly humorous, compulsively vibrant feature, The Death of Mr Lăzărescu seems so realistic and convincing, unfolding as though in real time, that it’s hard to believe it was acted. As it follows an ailing retired engineer, too fond of booze, who gets carted from one overtaxed Bucharest hospital to another in search of proper medical care, a whole stressed society is laid bare: Each doctor, nurse, paramedic and patient leaps into view with individuality and articulate self-defensiveness. Compassion and indifference clash, often within the same person. The fluid, mobile camera recalls the great works of Fred Wiseman and John Cassavetes.

Winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes, and one of the masterpieces of the Romanian New Wave, this drama of two friends arranging an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania is marked by formal rigor, exquisite writing and acting, and period detail that perfectly evokes the bleakness of the era. During the final days of communism, college roommates Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Găbița (Laura Vasiliu) are busy preparing for a night away. But rather than planning for a holiday, they are making arrangements for Găbița’s illegal abortion, and unwittingly, both find themselves burrowing deep down a rabbit hole filled with revelations. Taking place over the course of a single day, Mungiu’s film is a masterpiece of modern filmmaking, in parts both poignant and shocking.

Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale and a box-office hit at home, Netzer’s third film brilliantly deals with the mother of all moral dilemmas – the impossible choice faced by a parent willing to do everything in order to save her son who killed a child in a car accident. The tight script cleverly highlights the tormented relationship between mother and son, as well as the mores (or lack thereof) of the well-connected noveau riche. Playing the domineering yet strangely sympathetic mother – who might be the real victim – Luminița Gheorghiu (the nurse with a heart of gold in The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu) is pitch perfect, walking on an ethical tightrope.

A young man from the city travels to a remote village in rural Romania to sell the land he inherited from his grandfather, and discovers that the old man was the local crimelord. In order to sell, he has to face his grandfather’s deputies, now led by an affable Tartar (Vlad Ivanov, effortlessly superb again as a villain, as in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Snowpiercer). Meanwhile, a local policeman is investigating the discovery of a severed foot, but what he’s really looking for is revenge on his lifetime nemesis at any cost. If the Coen brothers had been Balkan born, this is how No Country for Old Men would have turned out. First-time director Mirică won the critics’ prize in Cannes and the top award at the Transilvania International Film Festival for this slick and thrilling Molotov cocktail of genres.