Nearly two decades since the birth of the Romanian New Wave catapulted filmmakers like Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days”), Cristi Puiu (“Sieranevada”) and Corneliu Porumboiu (“The Whistlers”) onto the global stage, a fresh crop of rising talents is breathing new life into the country’s film industry.
At this year’s 20th anniversary edition of the Transilvania Film Festival, New Wave mainstays like Radu Muntean – whose latest feature, “Întregalde,” recently premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival – shared the stage with the likes of Andrei Huțuleac (“#dogpoopgirl”) and Eugen Jebeleanu (“Poppy Field”), offering an invigorating snapshot of an industry opening its arms to embrace a wave of emerging talents.
“It’s a versatile generation,” says TIFF artistic director Mihai Chirilov. “While most of them address the hot topics du jour, they don’t go full frontal for the sake of it, but dress them up smartly, and sometimes inventively, not afraid to walk the edge. Their visual style or narrative approach may differ, but all of them are touching the grand issue of empathy (or the lack of it) – which is extremely relevant and symptomatic in a nowadays world that seems more and more divided.”
Here are seven rising Romanian talents poised to make a breakthrough in the year ahead: