Bogdan Dumitrache

Drawing inspiration from Wald, a 2015 novel by the bestselling author Doris Knecht, as well as her own traumatic experience of witnessing the 2020 Vienna attack, writer-director Elisabeth Scharang retreats to the woods in this atmospheric and soul-stirring film.

Romania's winning streak at festivals continues, but the most unusual and ambiguous one still lurks in mysterious darkness. The undeservedly underrated Gabriel de Achim challenged the widely renowned Cristi Puiu (“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”) to make a film using all the things, which the established Romanian master most detests in cinema. He constructed a non-linear story with wickedly tangled flash backs and flash forwards and set the same actors to perform different and multi-faceted roles.

Infidelity drama, male egos, lost dogs in Startsladden favorite Stefan Constantinescu’s arthouse gem about a man consumed by jealousy who risks losing everything while searching for the truth.

This story is about letting go. Sometimes we can't let go, and this might result in consequences that end in tragedy. There's only one thing we can do: face ourselves.

In the Outskirts of Bucharest, in an area he's known all his life, near 60s Police officer Visoiu is given the mission to find two prostitutes that are willing to testify in an organized crime case.

Alice, a buoyant and impertinent red-hair teenager is far from the charming little girl her mother adopted as she was unable to have a child of her own. Being an endless source of problems and affected by the specter of her mother’s disappointments, Alice acts with her back against the wall, forging lies and blurring lines between the fiction she designs for herself and the reality of her existence. Until her mother discovers she is pregnant.

Petru is a drilling engineer living in a community of oil industry workers. He has mixed feelings. On the one hand he is about to marry his pregnant girlfriend Laura, on the other he is involved with the wife of one of his colleagues, Sonia, the victim of a serious accident at work. His new life seems about to begin while she feels hers is ending. When Laura finds out about his relationship with Sonia, all hell breaks loose. Petru feels terrible guilt, but also responsibility for the baby-to-be.

Roxana is about to leave Romania and settle down in Madrid, Spain. Helped by Dan and his wife, Alina, she will soon find a job there and start a new life.

Cristina and Tudor have founded a happy family with their two children, Maria and Ilie. They are in their thirties and live an ordinary life in a nice apartment in a Romanian town, but one Sunday morning when Tudor takes his kids to the park, Maria disappears. Their lives abruptly change forever.

Costi (30) suddenly comes up with the idea of visiting his father, Sandu, and arrange a surprise reunion with the rest of the family that Sandu has neglected all his life. It's Costi's way of running away from his own couple issues for a day.

Back from a professional trip to Paris, a neurologist at the pinnacle of his career has to pick up his wife so that they can attend a family meal to commemorate his father, who died a year before. At his mother's flat, the guests are waiting for the priest to arrive while arguing about all kinds of things connected and unconnected with the world’s events and wars.

The drama follows a promising young architect as he tries to balance his personal life with the burdens of his career.

In the heart of the Danube Delta, superstition and religion are mixed together, like the earth and water that make up the mysterious mud from Tekir’s area, not far away. Chased away from her village because of her mysterious pregnancy, Mara finds herself employed at the Europa Hotel, providing treatment for infertile women using this miraculous mud. As she meets the rich and eccentric Mrs. Lili, Mara questions her beliefs and intuitions. The relationship between the two women is the key of the miracle of Tekir, between magic and power, tradition and modernity.

Costi leads a peaceful life. At night he likes to read his 6-year-old son stories, to help him sleep. Their favourite is Robin Hood. Costi sees himself as the hero - righter of wrongs and defender of the oppressed. One evening, his neighbour pays him an unexpected visit and shares a secret: there's treasure buried in his grandparents' garden, he's sure of it. If Costi will hire a metal detector to help locate it, he'll give him half of whatever they get. Skeptical at first, in the end Costi can't resist. He's on board. The two accomplices have one weekend to locate the loot. Despite every obstacle in their path, Costi refuses to be discouraged. For his wife and son, he's a real hero - nothing and no one are going to stop him.

A director with two weeks left on his latest production fakes an ulcer to pursue a romance with his lead actress.

Child's Pose is a contemporary drama focusing on the relationship between a mother and her 32-year-old son. After the accidental killing of a boy in a car crash, the mother tries to prevent her son being charged for the death, and she refuses to accept that her son is a grown-up man.

Alex, in his mid-thirties, is a quite neurotic character. When his mother is hospitalized with a stroke, the caring son's life gets out of track. At the hospital he finds himself in a burlesque kind of human zoo full of unexpected characters and surprising events. Trying to manage the situation in between everybody's advice, he's coming hypochondriac. While his mother seems to feel perfectly fine Alex is making his own set of mistakes - throughout with best intentions.

Luca (20) seduces girls then leaves them in the hands of his friends at the Black Sea port of Constanta. Luca falls in love with Veli, one of his potential victims. It's summer down the Danube river, in Harsova. The music is loud, the cars are fancy, the girls are tanned and Veli runs away from home in Luca's bed. First love has never felt more dangerous.

It's Christmas Eve in a small mountain train station and no train is coming since all the tracks are blocked with snow. Four people are waiting for a train that doesn't show up. They don't know each other, how long it's going to take or if they will ever reach their destinations. But as the hours pass, Madalina, Cristi, Ozana, Alex share the absurd, the despair and the hope. Because they are accidentally stuck here. Because no one knows when it will end. And because it's Christmas.

Paul Hanganu loves two women. Adriana his wife and the mother of their daughter, the woman with whom he's shared the thrills of the past ten years, and Raluca the woman who has made him redefine himself. He has to leave one of them before Christmas.

When the Soviet Army marched into Romania in 1944, a part of the Romanian population went “into the mountains” – a diverse assortment of nationalists and fascists, liberals, apolitical farmers and members of the middle-class, who were affected by the Communists’ expropriations. Over a thousand armed resistance groups took refuge in the inaccessible forests of the Carpathian Mountains where they waited in vain for the support of the Western Allies. One of them was led by Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu, who managed to remain undetected until 1976 when he was arrested. This film depicts the daily existence of this group. It tells the story of a struggle that became an end in itself, as the enemy was constantly in pursuit and arrest meant torture and often liquidation. Hungry and emotionally withdrawn, the group of young men got entangled in a partisan war that could not be won, lost in the landscape of the South Carpathians, accompanied by a vigilant secret police, the Securitate.

Victor, a business man from Bucharest who can’t stand anymore to see his son beat up in school, takes the boy to boxing classes. But Vlad, who’s 12 years old, is not interested in learning how to fight and refuses to enter the first training. To teach him a lesson, the father enters the boxing ring himself.

ある日突然、体に異変を感じはじめた一人暮らしの老人。体調不良の原因を突き止めて適切な処置を受けるため、いくつか病院をまわる羽目になるが...。

Ana and Nicolae, a young Romanian couple, travel by bus from Bucharest to Vienna with the prospect of making quick money by handing over a stolen car. As soon as they arrive, however, they are reassured that the car is not yet ready for them. Ana then wants to go back to Romania, Nicolae would rather travel further west. They are stuck penniless in Vienna.

While on his way for a business meeting, Tudor is having an unexpected 30 minutes break, because of the impossible traffic. He’s got enough time to have a coffee, to talk a little about his beloved little girl and to take a picture.