December 2 marks the start of the 10th Anniversary Edition of Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema in New York. The festival will take place at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (December 2-7) and Jacob Burns Film Center (December 3-8) and will offer a selection of the best in contemporary Romanian filmmaking, including features, documentaries, and shorts, along with classic and landmark films, panels, and other special programs focusing on the work of Romanian filmmakers. The festival’s artistic director is Mihai Chirilov.
The Making Waves Festival trailer is now online. Get a glimpse of what the festival has in store this year, learn more about all programs from the festival brochure, then purchase your tickets before they sell out.
Titles fresh from Cannes and Berlin lead the slate of new features, including Corneliu Porumboiu‘s The Treasure; Radu Jude’s Aferim!; Radu Muntean’s subtle morality play, One Floor Below; and Why Me?, the Sidney Lumet–esque political thriller by Tudor Giurgiu, based on real events.
This year’s festival will feature a special tribute screening of Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (2005), commemorating the 10th Anniversary of Making Waves. A seminal title of the Romanian New Wave, this dark comedy was presented at the first edition of the festival in 2006 and took American critics by storm, helping to establish Romania as a major player in the international landscape of contemporary art cinema.
Making Waves will also present a tribute to one of Romania’s greatest filmmakers, Mircea Daneliuc, whose work inspired the Romanian New Wave and who will join the festival as this year’s special guest. With a career spanning four decades, 17 features (writing 16 of them) and 11 movie roles, plus several plays, novels, and short stories, Daneliuc has amassed an oeuvre of subversive films anchored in reality but showcasing a mordant dark humor and unrelenting satire. Daneliuc’s uncompromising Intimate Bed will ignite Making Waves’ 10th edition as the Opening Night film.
Completing this exciting lineup are Alexander Nanau’s raw survival documentary Toto and His Sisters and a selection of short films, including the newest from Cristi Puiu and Ramona, the Cannes prize-winning noir.
The 2015 Edition of Making Waves will also feature panels, special guests, and a continuation of the Creative Freedom Through Cinema program, which examines the relationship between art and politics in Eastern Europe, and will spotlight films from Georgia and the Republic of Moldova Georgia is experiencing a cinematic renaissance thanks to recent festival hits such as Blind Dates and In Bloom, while Moldova is a place rarely seen on screen—although it gave us Oleg Mutu, one of the most acclaimed cinematographers in the world, who has collaborated with esteemed directors like Cristian Mungiu and Sergey Loznitsa. Both countries are represented in this year’s program with films about survival in the harshest conditions: George Ovashvili‘s top prize winner in Karlovy Vary Corn Island and Igor Cobileanski‘s The Unsaved, which features Mutu’s impressive camerawork.
Guests of this year’s festival include directors Mircea Daneliuc, Tudor Giurgiu, Dan Chișu,Oana Giurgiu, Andrei Crețulescu, Luiza Pârvu, and Andreea Vălean; actors Cecilia Bârbora,Andi Vasluianu, Emilian Oprea, and Mihai Constantin; and producers Ada Solomon, Codruța Crețulescu, and Toma Peiu.
More details: www.filmetc.org
