Scarred Hearts | MakingWaves

Scarred Hearts

Original title:

Radu Jude. 2017, Romania, 90 min

Original title: Inimi cicatrizate
Directed by Radu Jude
NEW YORK PREMIERE
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With an introduction by Declan Spring, the American publisher of Max Blecher’s Adventures in the Immediate Reality.

Romania, 1937. A young man spends his days at a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast, suffering from bone tuberculosis. Falling in love with another patient, he narrates their attempts to live life to the fullest as their bodies slowly fade away but their minds refuse to give up. This refreshingly unconventional drama is loosely based on Jewish Romanian author Max Blecher’s autobiographical novel Scarred Hearts, written before he died at age 29, after ten years of suffering. Ironically, the hero is never seen scribbling anything in Radu Jude’s (Aferim!) latest. Instead, Jude’s quiet direction allows us to witness an almost surreal carnival of vitality and wry humor in a Magic Mountain–like setting, while outside the hospital, fascism is on the rise.

Romania/Germany, 2016, 141m
Screenplay: Radu Jude
Based on: Max Blecher (novel)
Cinematography: Marius Panduru
Cast: Lucian Teodor Rus, Ivana Mladenovic, Ilinca Harnut, Bogdan Cotlet, Marian Olteanu
Producers: Ada Solomon, Ioana Draghici, Jonas Dornbach
Production: Hi Film Productions (RO) in co-production with Komplizen Film GmbH (DE)
Associate Production: Bord Cadre films (CH)
Festivals: 69th Locarno Film Festival: Special prize of the jury
Romanian with English subtitles

Critics’ Corner

Cine-File: A new review of Nae Caranfil`s film (available online)

"DO NOT LEAN OUT THE WINDOW is a boisterous film that looks at the seismic shift in Romanian society with the cautious joy of a caged animal set free. It is a crucial precursor to the revelatory Romanian New Wave that should not be missed."

NY Times: Film Series to Catch in N.Y.C.

"In Romania, the democratic reforms that followed the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 also turned the country into a global filmmaking powerhouse, culminating in what has been called the Romanian New Wave."

NYRB: J. Hoberman recommends

"These thirty films also include some of the best made anywhere during the past three decades."

MW public – Andrei Codrescu: “In Praise of New Romanian Film”

The New Wave festival returns to New York every year with astonishing new films, alongside a well-curated archive. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

J.B. Spins: “Luxury Hotel” – For fans of dystopian social satire

"Luxury Hotel could have probably only been produced during the immediate post-Ceausescu aftermath, when the palace was available, in all its faded grandeur. It is definitely spectacle, but serious, distinctively pointed spectacle."

Screenslate: “The Autobiography of N. Ceaușescu”- conceived as a flashback

"And now it is our turn, all these decades later, to be the ones to look and learn."

J.B. Spins: “The Oak” – Deeply compelling cinema

"The Oak is a defiantly bold, chaotically head-spinning indictment of Ceausescu Socialism, but it is also deeply compelling cinema. This is definitely auteurist cinema from Pintilie that still connects on a profoundly human level."

The Criterion Collection: Romanians… in America

"Film Forum will be showcasing thirty Romanian films made during the thirty years since the overthrow and execution of iron-fisted dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu."

„The Romanian New Wave shows no signs of waning, with steady input from such directors as Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristi Puiu, and Cristian Mungiu."

„The former communist country has emerged as a powerhouse of cinema over the last two decades and much has been made about the Romanian New Wave, a genre of naturalistic and unflinching films that have been consistently winning top prizes such as the Palme d’Or in Cannes and awards at the Berlin and Venice festivals.”

The New York Times

„In the last decade, the emergence of a Romanian new wave has been one of the most startling developments in world cinema, with one film after another winning prizes at Cannes and elsewhere.”

The Wall Street Journal

"Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema, the annual weeklong survey that has helped define and establish the southeastern European country as a stronghold of socially incisive, independently minded personal cinema.”

The Wall Street Journal

„Romania cinema has gradually become a central component of international film culture."