VENICE 2024: TWST (2024)
★★★★☆
Romanian director Andrei Ujica’s documentary TWST is a snapshot of America in a hot August 1965, the year The Beatles arrived.
Romania
Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (2023) (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii)
★★★★★
Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World is a wide-ranging, vicious satire on the post-communist, rampantly privatised, chaotically capitalist economy in Romania and everything else in modern European life, by Radu Jude.
The Whistlers (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
The Whistlers (La Gomera) by Corneliu Porumboiu is a Romanian crime thriller with a twisting plot, lots of corruption and a black comedy feel.
BFI LFF 2019: 8-13 October
★★★★☆
BFI LFF 2019: 8-13 October. The Whistlers, Deerskin, Algo-Rhythm and So Long, My Son.
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Day 6
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Day 6
Donbass (2018)
★★★★★
In Donbass Sergei Loznitsa’s anger at the war in eastern Ukraine pours out like red-hot lava in 13 episodes of a vicious cycle of dark comedy, absurdity, brutality and horror.
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
★★★★☆
The Sisters Brothers is a darkly funny, revisionist Western directed by Jacques Audiard.
Mimosas (2016)
★★★☆☆
Oliver Laxe’s second film Mimosas is an enigmatic, spiritual North African odyssey.
Ana, Mon Amour (2017)
★★★☆☆
An intimate portrait of the codependency of love, Cãlin Peter Netzer’s Ana, Mon Amour falters through its very male gaze.
BFI LFF 2016: Sieranevada (2016)
★★★☆☆
Taking place in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack, Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada reveals a family in turmoil when the patriarch dies.
Sieranevada (2016)
★★★★☆
Festival Review: Why Me? / De Ce Eu? (2015)
★★★☆☆
More an existential dilemma than a corruption thriller, Tudor Giurgiu’s Why Me? is an important but longwinded tribute to the man who fought the law.
Festival Review: Aferim! (2015)
★★☆☆☆
A black and white romp through 19th century Romanian feudalism, what Radu Jude’s Aferim! lacks in substance, it makes up for in style.
Child’s Pose / Pozitia Copilului (2013)
★★★★☆
Seeing a way to reassert control over her adult son’s life when he runs over and kills a child, an affluent Romanian woman sets out on a campaign of emotional and social manipulation to keep him out of prison, navigating the waters of power, corruption and influence.