Rolando Matsangos

Lucia has everything a woman could want. A loving husband and son. The opportunity to devote herself entirely to her family. A lifelong friendship with Cristina, which began during their university days. Yet, amid the intoxicating idyllic summer holiday, Lucia can feel nothing but longing for the person she once was. Lucia and Cristina, accompanied by their husbands, spend the summer in a small beach village whose charm has faded over time. Behind a façade of peace and security, Lucia finds herself drawn to everything that is not handed to her on a silver platter. An unattainable man from her past emerges in their holiday group, giving her a reason to hunt. Because life should not be without a bite.

A bartender-combiner urgently needs to pay off a debt. He persuades his brother, a fiery bouncer, to arrange a bachelor party together, without the knowledge of the owners of the club where he works.

An investigation team arrives in a small village near Bucharest to assess the circumstances surrounding a suspicious death. With the help of a united and bewildered community, the culprit is found within hours.

Seeking shelter in her work from the pain of a breakup, Lena, a painter turning 40, is commissioned to decorate a brutalist luxury hotel nestled in the depths of the Romanian forest. There, where the Danube ends its course in seemingly miraculous springs, Lena’s moral views are confronted with an overwhelmingly corrupted community.

There comes a point in our lives when sons become caregivers for their ageing parents. Nobody is ever truly prepared for it. The parent does not want to acknowledge the need for help, and the son feels it's time to step in, yet something holds him back. Besides love, one needs a great deal of courage to play this part.

Sami is a passionate visual artist with a keen eye for the world's untold stories. Tonight, he steps away from the comfort of artistic abstraction at a vibrant party, seeking authenticity amidst the chaos of a city in upheaval. Drawn to the raw energy of street protests, Sami finds himself in a reality far beyond the scope of his camera—a reality where the lines between observer and participant blur. As he navigates the complexities of truth, power, and freedom, Sami's journey becomes an exploration of resilience and the cost of integrity in the face of injustice. The Capture invites audiences on a gripping journey through the beauty and pain of standing up for one's beliefs, challenging us to question where we draw our own lines.

Portrait of a Romanian bourgeois family.

Camil wakes up one night without a penis. The nightmare continues when his partner also disappears after meeting a former lover. Camil sets out to find her and - wearing female clothes - joins a secret community dedicated to fertility, somewhere near a lake. And what he finds there will prove even more disturbing than his recent misadventures...

A night. Dozens of stories. A city. Lică, a taxi driver, is an all knowing guy, while Liviu, his friend, also a taxi driver keeps a lot to himself. They are completely different and their ideas about life and people only meet when they are eating and drinking at the bar. They are frustrated with their jobs. For Lică money is the most important thing, while Liviu thinks that a happy and fulfilling life represents more. They are trying to rediscover who they are and what they can do with their life, all while being on an on going adventure on the streets of Bucharest where they cross paths with all kinds of clients who end up having an impact on their lives, for better and also for worse.

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.