ROMANIAN SHORT FILM PANORAMA › Friday, March 13 › 7:30 PM › Salle Marguerite-Tellier
"Romania has been declared the latest country to watch out for in the film industry, and not just in Europe. In the last few years, films from a new generation of Romanian authors (Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristian Nemescu) have been generating a buzz, and they've been reaping the rewards at the Festival de Cannes with their full-length films. The team at REGARD has chosen to present another wave – a second – of Romanian filmmakers whose short films have also received their share of recognition across the international short film festival circuit. So why are people so intrigued by this new generation of filmmakers and their films?
Two of these films, A Good Day for a Swim by Bogdan Mustata and Waves by Adrian Sitaru both use the shores of the Black Sea as their canvas. However, it takes only a few minutes of watching to realize that these two short films are exploring the furthest thing from a peaceful universe of play and relaxation. Besides a rather minimalist approach to telling the stories (minimalism is known as the more prominent trademark of new Romanian cinema), the five featured films have other common themes and characteristics. The first of these that particularly affected me, and the most important in my opinion, is the violence in human relationships, because you could say that this violence just appears out of nowhere. That's how long and insidious its accumulation is, invisible even for those who live every day in a Romania still marked by forty years of communist dictatorship.
I present you these filmmakers, most of them born just a few years before 1989 (the fall of the Communist regime), and their films. They reveal various truths through their stories (and the simple fact that they are telling these stories is a sign of hope), putting under a harsh spotlight these men, women and children in the grasp of a heritage of misunderstandings and rage that never stops overtaking them." Bogdan Stephan

I PROGRAMMING I

MEGATRON by Marian Crisan
2008 › 14 min › Winner of the Short Film Palme d'or CANNES 2008
Maxim lives alone with his mother in a village near Bucharest. She takes him to McDonald's in Bucharest for his eighth birthday, but what Maxim wants most is to meet his father who lives in Bucharest.

A GOOD DAY TO GO FOR A SWIM by Bogdan Mustata
2008 › 10 min › Winner of the Golden Bear BERLIN 2008
Three young delinquents escape from reform school and are trying to get out of the country. They end up on a road trip with a prostitute and a van driver.

ALEXANDRA by Radu Jude
2007 › 26 min › Selection Clermont-Ferrand 2008
Tavi, a man in his late thirties, discovers one day that his four-year-old daughter, Alexandra, is no longer calling him "Dad".

INTERIOR. BLOC OF FLATS HALLWAY by Ciprian Alexandrescu
2007 › 16 min
The events in this story could happen to anyone: someone's death triggers a chain reaction that involves the neighbours of a hallway. A satire of the world we live in, based on a true story.

WAVES by Adrian Sitaru
2007 › 17 min › Winner of the Leopards of Tomorrow section at Locarno 2007 A woman asks a young man to watch her child while she goes down to the shore.

A discussion hosted by Bogdan Stefan, a Romanian-born Quebec filmmaker, will follow the screening