Carol I

The Second Game

2014

A deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television images in real time. A Bucharest derby between the country’s leading teams, Dinamo and Steaua, taking place in heavy snow, one year before the revolution that toppled Ceaușescu.

Cabbage, Potatoes and other Demons

2017

1 village, 1.000 tractors, 100.000 tons of cabbages & potatoes each year - which are hardly sold and eventually destroyed. Is there any way out?

No Festival

2020

Due to a pandemic, the Electric Castle music festival shifts into an intimate concert staged for cameras instead, with three bands and no live audience.

We Feed the World

2005

A documentary that exposes the shocking truths behind industrial food production and food wastage, focusing on fishing, livestock and crop farming. A must-see for anyone interested in the true cost of the food on their plate.

Knights of the Sky: Air War Over Romania

Meet American fighter pilots and bombers who raided Romanian targets in WW-II including its major oilfields centered on Ploesti and Romanians who defended them. 'Ace' pilot interviews, both American and Romanian, as well as US Air Force prisoners experiences are explored through rarely viewed Romanian archive footage. The documentary is seen through the eyes and words of Nicholas Dimancescu. He journeys back to Romania both to discover his own roots and also to uncover the stories of American and Romanian airmen who raided and defended Romania's oil refineries during World War II. The experiences of wartime 'aces' on both sides are recounted and two of them, once enemies who attacked one another over Romania, meet for the first time 66 years later.

Children of the Decree

2005

Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women, was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children. All forms of contraception were totally banned. The New Romanian Man was born. By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Romanian society was rapidly changing. By using very interesting archival footage and excerpts from old fiction films and by interviewing famous personalities from that time – gynecologists or mothers who were part of the new society - the director revives this period of tremendous oppression of personal freedom. Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters, and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them.

Golgotha

1966

Six widows demand compensation for the death of their husbands, who were killed during a worker's strike. The women are arrested and taken to the police quarters, where the authorities try to make them retract their statements, but it turns out they're not so easily intimidated.

Nostalgia for Dictatorship

2020

Several decades after the collapse of the communist system, nostalgia for the former regime has reached unimaginable proportions in almost all former communist European countries. The documentary Nostalgia for Dictatorship does not limit itself to presenting this genuine syndrome of "longing for dictatorship", but, in parallel with the opinions and motivations of ordinary citizens living in the former communist space, it advances explanations by researchers from various fields, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, ethologists, etc., regarding the intimate motivations of such a paradoxical feeling.

Helping Mihaela

2011

A Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.

The Dead Nation

2017

A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.

The Source - One Day in a Roma Settlement in Romania

2009

The film starts with a long, static shot of the sun rising above the hills near the Roma village of Hetea in Romania. We only hear the sounds of birds, including a cuckoo. In the distance, a satellite dish figures on a roof. Slowly, the daily routine begins. We see more and more activity, like the harnessing of a horse to a cart, loading stripped tree trunks, collecting water from a pipe, playing soccer and a girl getting punished with a severe slap on her arm. These scenes are mostly captured from a distance. Then, towards noon, the fat is in the fire. The camera looks for the villagers who argue with each other and registers how an old man paces up and down the street. Because the images have not been subtitled (intentionally), the meaning of the quarrel remains unclear. The film does not mention any names or other facts, either. The absence of this context makes this documentary into a picturesque impression.

Aferim!

2015

Set in early 19th century Wallachia, Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.