A spacious apartment in the centre of Bucharest and a large family gathered together to celebrate the birthday of its frail, 94-year-old patriarch: anything could happen in Dan Chişu’s overcomplicated family drama The Anniversary [+], which is competing in the International Competition of the Warsaw International Film Festival (13-22 October). What emerges from so many bubbly relationships and effervescent reactions is the fact that Romania’s society is still struggling (and is still far from succeeding) to redeem, fight or at least forget its communist past, with death and old age being powerful allies in this endeavour.

Chişu’s screenplay immediately sets the tone of this apartment drama: several people fret as they clean and decorate a big, somewhat antiquated apartment. A sizeable table is prepared for a family celebration, and we soon find out that patriarch Radu Maligan (the late Mircea Albulescu) is turning 94, with several generations of his sprawling family gathering for a special lunch. The Maligans are not a happy family: quarrels and thorny remarks hang heavy in the atmosphere. And things will not get any better when the guests, former work colleagues of the patriarch’s, start to arrive at the birthday party, like a menagerie of beasts bearing their claws and fangs.

It is impossible to write a review for The Anniversary without addressing the elephant in the room: the film feels like a less ambitious, clumsier version of Cristi Puiu’s superb Sieranevada [+]. But if Puiu excellently explores the complexities of family relationships, Chişu seems more interested in cobbling together a typology that comments on a generous palette of present issues in modern-day Romanian society and its relationship with a lingering, rather bitter past. The characters seem handpicked in order to cover as much social terrain as possible, from the corrupt, abusive politician and the former Securitate agent to the hardworking, frustrated housewife and the beautiful, ambitious young socialite.

Unfortunately, the similarities with Sieranevada are augmented by Maligan’s ailing health, which means that the screenplay misuses the dying man as a quiet, rather menacing prop, even if he is the centre of all conversations: it is a birthday party, but it could easily have been a memorial service. The topics of faith and drug addiction are other similarities between the two productions, which were written and shot almost simultaneously.

At its most sensitive and ambitious, The Anniversary studies how the past continuously and inexorably affects the present – how it is always there, from the putrid, terrifying skeleton in the closet to the subconscious impulses of the mind, which are never understood but are often the source of various reactions. When not exploring this struggle with time (the characters have lost their power, youth, health and love), the drama strays into insufficiently convincing comic territory. Having cast some of the most respected or popular Romanian actors may help the film’s box-office performance at home, but The Anniversary is only a minor title in a national film industry that keeps reinventing itself.

Aniversarea.2017.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 30 min
Size: 	5.44 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	8 413 kb/s
BPP: 	0.169
Audio
#1:  	Romanian 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/908E95ED3D2BD3B/Aniversarea.2017.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB.mkv

Language(s):Romanian
Subtitles:English, Romanian

The post Dan Chisu – Aniversarea AKA The Anniversary (2017) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In 1988, Nela, a young schoolteacher, tries to carry out the will of her late father, an officer of the Securitate (Ceausescu’s secret police) who wants his body to be used for medical research. She decides to leave Bucharest to teach in a small provincial town, where she meets Mitica, a doctor at the hospital who is obsessed with saving the life of a Christlike patient whom the authorities wish to let die. They both share an odd sense of humor and see themselves as kindred spirits, but their relationship produces less than welcome results. The Oak is a vivid look at Romania before Ceausescu’s downfall.

1.61GB | 1h 40mn | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/065CC56EC9D48AE/Lucian_Pintilie_-_(1992)_The_Oak.mkv

Language:Romanian
Subtitles:English

The post Lucian Pintilie – Balanta AKA The Oak (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A very black comedy (and virtually unknown in the U.S.), Niki and Flo is about ill-suited neighbors united by marriage. Angela and her husband have decided to leave Romania for a better life in the United States. Niki, Angela’s father, who is also a former colonel in the Romanian army, is torn between his wish to see his daughter happy and his desire to have her close by; meanwhile Flo, the father of Niki’s son-in-law and a domestic tyrant of sorts, slowly exerts his control over Niki. Courtesy of Filmex Romania. Based on a screen play by Cristi Puiu.

1.53GB | 1h 35m | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/229CEEEA74E3A0C/Lucian_Pintilie_-_(2001)_Niki_and_Flo.mkv

Language:Romanian
Subtitles:English

The post Lucian Pintilie – Niki Ardelean, colonel în rezerva AKA Niki and Flo (2003) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot Synopsis from allmovie.com
Romanian director Cristian Nemescu’s comedy California Dreamin’ unfolds against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, circa 1999. A NATO train rolls through a Romanian hamlet, transporting a plethora of weapons across the country – without official documents, and equipped only with the verbal consent of the Romanian authorities. The transport thus grows intensely vulnerable to the locals – particularly the head of the railway station, who moonlights as a mobster.

2.38GB | 2h 28m | 712×436 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/0ECCD79D9F71642/Cristian_Nemescu_-_(2007)_California_Dreamin.mkv

https://ddownload.com/53vlh9eu9goz/Cristian_Nemescu_-_(2007)_California_Dreamin.mkv

Language(s):English,Romanian,Spanish,Italian
Subtitles:None

The post Cristian Nemescu – California Dreamin’ (Nesfarsit) (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This full feature movie presents the story of a renowned director, Thomas (Dan Condurache), at the peak of his career, obsessed by the hallucinations of the desired woman, but also of his creative problems. Although his movies are awarded, and he is loved by the public, by actors and friends, Thomas is tormented by the desire to direct the movie of his life.

http://nitroflare.com/view/357C34C40C5B9A1/Dream_Woman.mkv

Language(s):Romanian
Subtitles:English, French

The post Dan Pita – Femeia visurilor AKA Dream Woman (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis: “Mirage tells the story of an African football player in a small Hungarian town, who commits a crime and has to flee. He finds refuge on a farm deep in the Hungarian flatland. Soon he realizes that the farm is a modern slave camp where he is forced to fight for his freedom and ultimately his life.”

Quote:
The Hungarian plains might as well be Sergio Leone’s American West in Szabolcs Hajdu’s Mirage, an atmospheric fable whose setting feels like no place, any time. Isaach De Bankolé, as the loner who shows up here for reasons we never learn and contends with a gang of slave-driving farmers, carries a film that is philosophically related to but more satisfying than Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control. The picture should draw well at fests, but is willfully obscure enough that, sans an auteur whose name is known in the States, it may be a hard sell here. – John Defore, Variety

https://nitro.download/view/EDC7F80B9D85E59/delibab.dvdrip-no1.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/C3291879A123B02/delibab.dvdrip-no1.English.srt

Language(s):English, Romanian, Hungarian, French
Subtitles:English

The post Szabolcs Hajdu – Délibáb AKA Mirage (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.