Tarzan’s Testicles | MakingWaves

Tarzan’s Testicles

Original title:

Alexandru Solomon. 2017, Romania, 105 min

Original title: Ouăle lui Tarzan
Directed by Alexandru Solomon
2017. 105m. Romania/France. In Russian & Abkhazian with subtitles. NR.
U.S. Premiere
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Q&A with director Alexandru Solomon

“A fascinating and ambitious documentary that should further help consolidate Solomon’s reputation as one of world cinema’s most interesting nonfiction directors.” (The Hollywood Reporter)

At the end of the 1920s the Soviets built a medical research center in Sukhumi, the capital of today’s Abkhazia—a self-proclaimed nation of fewer than 250,000 inhabitants that is recognized by only a handful of countries—aiming to crossbreed humans and apes. The experiments proved unsuccessful, but people and animals still live together in the dilapidated institution to this very day. Venturing into the disputed territory marked by sociopolitical turmoil, Alexandru Solomon’s fascinating documentary ponders the relationship between humans and other primates in order to investigate the destructive influence of dogma and the role of faith and ethics in scientific research.

Screenplay: Alexandru Solomon
Director of Photography: Radu Gorgos
Editor: Sophie Reiter
Production: Hi Film Productions, Seppia
Festivals: 2017 Karlovy Vary, Stockholm

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."