16th Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema

March 25-31, 2022: ONLINE in the U.S.
December 7-9, 2021 @ Jacob Burns Film Center

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, replaying two of its previous offerings (Poppy Field and Unidentified) while adding several fiction works plus plenty of documentaries and shorts, including several U.S. premieres.

Coincidentally, all three fiction films newly included in the program share a similar narrative device—the death of a key character—that threatens to disrupt an already fragile balance: the familial comfort zone in Mikado and Otto the Barbarian, and a lifelong friendship in No Rest for the Old Lady. Two of the four documentaries (Holy Father and Us Against Us) are extremely intimate works, mirroring each other as both directors face their fathers on camera in search of reconciliation.

The remaining documentaries cover both ends of the spectrum, ranging from the experimental (You Are Ceaușescu to Me) to the National Geographic approach (Wild Romania), each compelling and surprising in their own way. The sky’s the limit for the short film packages, featuring scientific experiments, Maria Tănase’s lullaby song, and the end of the world in a highly inventive, engaging and entertaining mix.

Holy Father

Andrei Dăscălescu. 2020, Romania, 85 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Mikado

Emanuel Pârvu. 2021, Romania/Czech Republic, 96 min

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

Andrei Gruzsniczki. 2021, Romania, 99 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Otto the Barbarian

Ruxandra Ghițescu. 2020, Romania/Belgium, 110 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Poppy Field

Eugen Jebeleanu. 2020, Romania, 81 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Unidentified

Bogdan George Apetri. 2020, Romania/Czech Republic/Latvia, 123 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Us Against Us

Andra Tarara. 2020, Romania, 74 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Wild Romania

Dan Dinu, Cosmin Dumitrache. 2021, Romania, 123 min

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!

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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You Are Ceaușescu to Me

Sebastian Mihăilescu. 2021, Romania, 100 min

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.

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Cradle

Paul Mureșan. 2020, Romania, 4 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Intermission for Autonomous Vacuum and the End of the World

Eugen Dediu. 2020, Romania, 16 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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The Mouse B

Ioachim Stroe. 2021, Romania, 18 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Still

Miruna Minculescu. 2020, Romania, 29 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Summer Planning

Alexandru Mironescu. 2021, Romania, 26 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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31 Hours

Claudiu Mitcu. 2021, Romania, 21 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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I Am Dorin

Valeriu Andriuță. 2020, Romania/Moldova, 23 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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No Singing After 8

Alex Pintică. 2021, Romania, 20 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Together

Alma Buhagiar. 2020, Romania, 23 min

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

STREAMING IN THE U.S. | JBFC Virtual Marquee

March 25-31, 2022
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Întregalde

Radu Muntean. 2021, Romania, 104 min

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.

PAST SCREENING:
Jacob Burns Film Center

Dec 9, 2021
7:00 pm

Miracle

Bogdan George Apetri. 2021, Romania, Czech Republic, Latvia, 118 min

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.

PAST SCREENING:
Jacob Burns Film Center

Dec 7, 2021
7:00 pm

In the News

Maia Morgenstern in attendance