Romanian Cinema at TIFF: Bogdan George Apetri and Andrei Ujica Represent in Toronto

3 out of 300 films might not seem like a lot, but from the nation that produces less than 30 features a year, it’s plenty. There are three Romanian films being featured in Toronto this year, one is a co-production and the other pair are split among the Contemporary World Cinema and Visions programme.

The Visions programme features poetic films that take a radical and innovative approach to filmmaking and the art of storytelling – after it had the World’s premiere at Cannes 2010, Andrei Ujică’s The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu has been shown at many other film festival from around the world and impressed the critics and the public. Ujică’s three hour documentary film is an historical tableau that in its scope resembles American film frescos, such as those dedicated to the Vietnam War. This essay film imagines the life of the controversial Romanian president as he himself might have recalled it on the eve of his 1989 execution.

Andrei Ujică was born in 1951, in Timișoara, Romania, while in 1990 he decided to make films. So he started with Videograms of a Revolution (1992), co-directed with Harun Farocki, continued with Out of the Present (1995), and, now, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu concludes his trilogy dedicated to the end of communism. “When I was young, Ceaușescu was like a screen on which I projected my hatred against any form of totalitarianism. I lived under him from when I was 14 until 29 — that’s when I left Romania. But all this time, for me, he was nothing more than the abstract object of an opaque hatred. When I started working on this film, I set myself to make him become more concrete” said the director in an interview. “After all, a dictator is simply an artist who is able to fully put into practice his egotism. It is a mere question of aesthetic level, whether he turns out to be Baudelaire or Bolintineanu, Louis XVI or Nicolae Ceausescu”. An international date release is not set yet, but in Romania, the film will be released on October 28th.

Contemporary World Cinema section features two Romanian films. One of them is Outbound (Periferic – original title). The movie is based on a story by Cristian Mungiu and Ioana Uricaru, while the director is Bogdan George Apetri. He’s also the one who wrote the script, along with Tudor Voican. The film followes a young girl, named Matilda, trapped in a five-year prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit. After two years in prison, she’s given a day pass for her mother’s funeral, but she has no intention to get back in jail. Matilda is a tired person, aged before her time, who doesn’t trust anybody and whom nobody trusts either. She’s one of the most loneliest people in the history of cinema. Matilda is just a person who denied herself and whom others forbidden usual human necessities. She’s always asked questions with double meanings, nobody is happy to see her, she has to keep her mouth shut… nobody offers her kindness and nobody says “yes” to her” – this is how Ana Ularu, the actress who plays Matilda, described her character in an interview we published last week.

The other Romanian film in Contemporary World Cinema section at TIFF 2010 is Eran Riklis’ The Mission of the Human Resource Manager. This is a France/Germany/Israel/Romania co-production, a tragi-comedy (based on a novel written by Abraham B. Yehoshua, in 2004) centered on the HR manager of Israel’s largest industrial bakery, who sets out to save the reputation of his business and prevent the publication of a defamatory article. Riklis’ film has won Prix du Public UBS (the audience prize) at Locarno. The leading actor is Mark Ivanir, while Irina Petrescu, Papil Panduru, Bogdan Stanoevici and Rozina Cambos complete the cast.