A torrid encounter between a troubled youth and the wife of the village priest is at the center of Octav Chelaru’s “A Higher Law,” which bowed at the Thessaloniki Film Festival last fall and will have its domestic premiere in the main competition at the Transilvania Film Festival.
Inspired by true events, the film is a powerful exploration of religious dogma that raises larger questions about the nature of freedom and faith. The feature debut of Chelaru, a self-taught director whose previous short films, “Black Clothes” and “The Parallel State,” premiered in the Leopards of Tomorrow competition at the Locarno Film Festival, it’s produced by Radu Stancu of Bucharest-based deFilm Production, in co-production with 42film and Eed Productions.
“A Higher Law” stars Mălina Manovici as Ecaterina, a religion teacher at the local high school and the frustrated wife of the village priest (Alexandru Papadopol). Hemmed in by her...
Inspired by true events, the film is a powerful exploration of religious dogma that raises larger questions about the nature of freedom and faith. The feature debut of Chelaru, a self-taught director whose previous short films, “Black Clothes” and “The Parallel State,” premiered in the Leopards of Tomorrow competition at the Locarno Film Festival, it’s produced by Radu Stancu of Bucharest-based deFilm Production, in co-production with 42film and Eed Productions.
“A Higher Law” stars Mălina Manovici as Ecaterina, a religion teacher at the local high school and the frustrated wife of the village priest (Alexandru Papadopol). Hemmed in by her...
- 6/16/2022
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
In world cinema, austerity isn’t just a quality — it’s an aesthetic ideal that gets passed around from country to country. The epicenter of high cinematic austerity was once the Sweden of Ingmar Bergman. Then it was the Czechoslovakia of the pre-Communist new wave, then the Germany of Fassbinder, then the Iran of Kiarostami, then the Romania of that new wave.
“Two Lottery Tickets” is a Romanian film that could be called a caper comedy, but it’s been made with a bone-dry austerity — a meticulous and shrewdly observed shagginess — that viewers will recognize from far more serious pieces of Romanian cinema. In this case, it’s that very quality that grounds the comedy. At one point the characters actually mock Romanian cinema, calling it too tragic and morose to catch the real spirit of Romania. I can’t speak to the accuracy of that, but I can say...
“Two Lottery Tickets” is a Romanian film that could be called a caper comedy, but it’s been made with a bone-dry austerity — a meticulous and shrewdly observed shagginess — that viewers will recognize from far more serious pieces of Romanian cinema. In this case, it’s that very quality that grounds the comedy. At one point the characters actually mock Romanian cinema, calling it too tragic and morose to catch the real spirit of Romania. I can’t speak to the accuracy of that, but I can say...
- 5/28/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
“Romanians are bad at making movies. We have such a beautiful country, but they only show doom and gloom,” whines Pompiliu (Alexandru Papadopol) in the shaggy, summery comedy “Two Lottery Tickets.” Meant as a playful jab toward the Romanian New Wave movement that has put the country on the cinematic map, local audiences might have found a little bit of truth in writer/director Paul Negoescu’s script as they were clearly ready for something different.
Continue reading ‘Two Lottery Tickets’: The Romanian New Wave Gets A Summery, Slacker Comedy [Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Two Lottery Tickets’: The Romanian New Wave Gets A Summery, Slacker Comedy [Review] at The Playlist.
- 5/20/2021
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Two Lottery Tickets (Doua Lozuri) Dekanalog Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Paul Negoescu Writer: Ion Luca Caragiale, Paul Negoescu Cast: Dorian Boguta, Dragos Bucur, Alexandru Papadopol, Andi Vasluianu, Serban Pavlu Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 5/13/21 Opens: May 21, 2021 If a Bucharest filmmaker wants to make a […]
The post Two Lottery Tickets Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Two Lottery Tickets Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 5/16/2021
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
The drama centres on an affair between a Religious Education teacher and one of her students. Following several promising short films, Romanian director Octav Chelaru is ready to start production on his first feature, Balaur (working title; the word means “dragon”). The film is being staged by Romanian production company deFilm, with Radu Stancu and Livia Rădulescu serving as producers, in co-production with 42Film and Serbian outfit Eed Productions (producers Vladimir Vasiljevic and Maja Popovic). The screenplay, written by Chelaru, follows Ecaterina (Mălina Manovici), a 35-year-old Re teacher in a provincial town, who begins a relationship with 16-year-old Iuliu (Sergiu Smerea), one of her students. Iuliu will soon start confessing his sins to the town priest (Alexandru Papadopol), who is actually Ecaterina’s husband. Shooting will start on 10 August in the provincial town of Râmnicu Vâlcea and is expected to wrap 25 days...
An architect vacationing on a nudist beach with his family in the summer of 1983 is picked up for questioning by two officers from Romania’s dreaded secret police. They promise to return him the following day, but when he’s locked in a jail cell with a menacing small-time crook turned police collaborator, he finds himself exposed to the brutal realities – and sinister betrayals – of life in Communist-era Romania.
“Arrest” is the second feature of Andrei Cohn, based off a script he co-wrote with Alexandru Negoescu. It stars Alexandru Papadopol and Iulian Postelnicu as two cellmates caught up in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game, as the interrogator hunts for the names of co-conspirators in a cooked-up plot against the state. The film was produced by Mandragora and Iadasarecasa, with the support of the Romanian Film Center. It screened at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Cohn says “Arrest” depicts “this ballet we...
“Arrest” is the second feature of Andrei Cohn, based off a script he co-wrote with Alexandru Negoescu. It stars Alexandru Papadopol and Iulian Postelnicu as two cellmates caught up in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game, as the interrogator hunts for the names of co-conspirators in a cooked-up plot against the state. The film was produced by Mandragora and Iadasarecasa, with the support of the Romanian Film Center. It screened at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Cohn says “Arrest” depicts “this ballet we...
- 7/4/2019
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Perhaps there are people unaware that dictatorships torture their citizens. In that case, is the best way to educate them by baldly showing the brutality, from face slams to chest kicks to gut punches? Is there really anything valuable in subjecting viewers — the very few who’ll bother to watch Andrei Cohn’s “Arrest” all the way through — to more than two hours of predictable verbal and physical abuse, with the only message being that man can be horrifically brutal to his fellow man? This punishing slog about a mild-mannered guy in Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania arrested for perceived subversion and tortured by a sadistic criminal in their jail cell will get a bit of attention following its top win in Transylvania’s Romanian competition, but the film has no audience, either at home or abroad.
The question of how much to show is of course an eternal one, but...
The question of how much to show is of course an eternal one, but...
- 6/10/2019
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
With his third feature, rising Romanian director Paul Negoescu reaches back to a time when Woody Allen’s name was associated with intelligent romantic comedies and jazz, delivering a film drenched in Allen-esque situations replanted in Bucharest. That in itself is fine, yet while “The Story of a Summer Lover” is intended as an homage to those classic films, down to the use of music and specific urban settings, Negoescu lacks the ability to make his schlubby characters interesting.
Instead, this overly chatty story of a math professor who finds more satisfaction sleeping with nubile students than with his girlfriend merely hauls out yet another bunch of unexceptional navel-gazing characters whose physical and intellectual attractions will escape most audiences’ comprehension. It’s good to see Romanian cinema continuing to diversify, but this isn’t quite the thinking man’s comedy it very much wants to be.
The triumvirate of friends...
Instead, this overly chatty story of a math professor who finds more satisfaction sleeping with nubile students than with his girlfriend merely hauls out yet another bunch of unexceptional navel-gazing characters whose physical and intellectual attractions will escape most audiences’ comprehension. It’s good to see Romanian cinema continuing to diversify, but this isn’t quite the thinking man’s comedy it very much wants to be.
The triumvirate of friends...
- 6/3/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
Paul Negoescu realized he hit the jackpot with “Two Lottery Tickets,” the low-budget comedy he shot for around €30,000 which – to the surprise of everyone, including the director himself – would become the top-grossing Romanian film of 2016, raking in €540,000 at the box office.
But for a helmer whose first feature, “A Month in Thailand,” screened in the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, a breakout, box-office hit didn’t change expectations for his third movie, “The Story of a Summer Lover,” which world premiered in the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival May 31.
“It’s a different film,” says Negoescu, calling “Summer Lover” a “personal story” that he suspects will appeal to a smaller, niche audience. Modest ambitions aside, the movie is bound to generate buzz off of Negoescu’s earlier successes; even if it can’t match “Lottery’s” big payout, “people will hear about this film, for sure,” he says.
The eponymous...
But for a helmer whose first feature, “A Month in Thailand,” screened in the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, a breakout, box-office hit didn’t change expectations for his third movie, “The Story of a Summer Lover,” which world premiered in the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival May 31.
“It’s a different film,” says Negoescu, calling “Summer Lover” a “personal story” that he suspects will appeal to a smaller, niche audience. Modest ambitions aside, the movie is bound to generate buzz off of Negoescu’s earlier successes; even if it can’t match “Lottery’s” big payout, “people will hear about this film, for sure,” he says.
The eponymous...
- 6/2/2018
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Faulty Blueprint: Rugina’s Debut Pleasures the Crowd, Numbs the Mind
A certifiable hit at the Romanian box office, Iulia Rugina’s directorial debut, Love Building has the formulaic, crowd pleasing prowess of similar Western counterparts where hokey endeavors are piled one on top of another until, instead of revealing its own realistic mess, we reach a staunchly uplifting and/or hopelessly trite finale. To her credit, Rugina doesn’t completely dissolve her narrative in saccharine fantasyland by ending on an open-ended sequence that doesn’t quite put the ribbon on the wrapped box, but neither is it operating as anything other than simplistic fluff. While it doesn’t neatly solve the many problems of its many characters, the film also fails to question its own complicity in these types of problems, namely that maybe our conditioned, heteronormative notions of love and successfully realistic relationships is the root of discord.
A certifiable hit at the Romanian box office, Iulia Rugina’s directorial debut, Love Building has the formulaic, crowd pleasing prowess of similar Western counterparts where hokey endeavors are piled one on top of another until, instead of revealing its own realistic mess, we reach a staunchly uplifting and/or hopelessly trite finale. To her credit, Rugina doesn’t completely dissolve her narrative in saccharine fantasyland by ending on an open-ended sequence that doesn’t quite put the ribbon on the wrapped box, but neither is it operating as anything other than simplistic fluff. While it doesn’t neatly solve the many problems of its many characters, the film also fails to question its own complicity in these types of problems, namely that maybe our conditioned, heteronormative notions of love and successfully realistic relationships is the root of discord.
- 12/4/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Watching Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, some might be tempted to think its astonishing naturalistic longueurs could be duplicated by anyone with a camera and a few free hours. But making the minutiae of life hold continuous interest is no easy task, as demonstrated by Puiu's fledgling first feature, 2001's Stuff And Dough. The basic framework is the same: He starts the clock ticking on a urgent task, then fills the minutes with the kind of aimless chatter that devours most of our waking hours, so each pointless argument seems like a maddening denial of an imminent crisis. Although the movies use similar strategies, it turns out to make a big difference whether the pressing issue is the slow death of an elderly hermit, or a drug delivery run by a shiftless dropout. In Stuff And Dough, Alexandru Papadopol is given four hours and a suspiciously large.
- 4/24/2008
- by Sam Adams
- avclub.com
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