Untamed Romania provides insight into the stunning natural wonders of Romania, with the Carpathian Mountains, the Danube Delta, and Transylvania as its major areas of interest.
In the early 19th century the Romanian Theodor Diamant was inspired by the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier and established one of Fourier's "phalansteries" in Rumania. The film dramatizes the origins and demise of this effort, called the "Scaieni Phalanstery (the term is derived from "phalanx" and "monastery"). Among the socio-political commentary that is conveyed throughout, there is an important collusion between the army and the wealthy landowners of the time, and as the film points out in its own way, neither of these groups has ever been convicted of socialist/utopian tendencies.
1968, The Socialist Republic of Romania. Women catch up on the latest tendencies in beachwear, the young hippies of Hamburg are harshly criticized by Romanian students, while Nicolae Ceaușescu reads the famous defiance speech against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. Floating solemnly over all this is The Internationale, sung on a stadium by a crowd of pioneers dressed in white shirts and red ties. A certainty for each probability: the documentary is at the same time a history lesson and an ideological warning sign, the director’s endeavour permanently draws our attention to the functions of the propaganda film, yet without tarnishing the fascination that dwells in the core of the images, that of the figures that wave at us from a past buried in commonplaces and political parti pris.
A documentary that exposes the shocking truths behind industrial food production and food wastage, focusing on fishing, livestock and crop farming. A must-see for anyone interested in the true cost of the food on their plate.
The fascinating portrait of Ion Bârlàdeanu. The touching and inspiring story of a man who literally lived in the gutter for 20 years - and in the meantime managed to create paintings and collages which are now exhibited alongside works by Andy Warhol or Marcel Duchamp.
In Iasi, Romania, from June 28 to July 6, 1941, nearly 15 000 Jews were murdered in the course of a horrifying pogrom. At the time, the programmed extermination of European Jews had not yet began. After the war, the successive communist governments did all they could to ensure the Iasi pogrom would be forgotten. It was not until November of 2004 that Romania recognized for the first time its direct responsibility in the pogrom. All that remains of this massacre are about a hundred photographs taken as souvenirs by german and romanian soldiers, and a few remaining survivors.
At the end of the 16th century, Wallachia's ruler Michael the Brave dreams of uniting the kingdoms of Wallachia,Transylvania and Moldavia into a single country known as The United Principalities.
Recorded over 10 years, România Sălbatică shows the colorful beauty of Romanian nature accompanied with wildlife.
Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women, was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children. All forms of contraception were totally banned. The New Romanian Man was born. By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Romanian society was rapidly changing. By using very interesting archival footage and excerpts from old fiction films and by interviewing famous personalities from that time – gynecologists or mothers who were part of the new society - the director revives this period of tremendous oppression of personal freedom. Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters, and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them.
Horia Colibasanu is a dentist, father of two boys and elite climber. In 2008, he refused to abandon, at 7400 meters on the Annapurna, his sick companion, the Basque mountaineer Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, implanted his own life in danger. His action dazzled the climbing community. Despite this tragic incident, he continued to climb in pure alpine style, without supplemental oxygen. In 2017, the 40-year-old Romanian athlete will return to Everest, after two unsuccessful attempts. For the first time, Horia is attempting a solo ascent.
In 1947, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito visited, for the first time, Romania. Its communist regime gave him, as present, a painting from a great Romanian artist Ion Andeescu: 'The Leafless Forest'. In the 60s, a young art critic, Radu Bogdan, decided to elaborate a monograph dedicated to the great painter, including reproduction of the painting given to Tito. After countless problems, he obtained the permission to photograph the painting. The moment they took the painting off the wall, they found - a microphone. Somebody was spying on Tito...
A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.
A look at what happened after Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was filmed in the Romanian village of Glod. It follows the life of one girl who longs to escape the poverty as foreign lawyers arrive with the promise of suing 20th Century Fox for millions of dollars.
Set in early 19th century Wallachia, Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.
A look at the Jewish community in Rădăuți, Romania, from 1974 to 1976.
Made on the occasion of March 8, it presents a series of brief portraits of women, from various professional fields, of different ages and even of different ethnicities, pointing out the benefits that the communist organization had brought to their daily lives. A special emphasis is placed on their status as mothers and on the role of nurseries and socialist kindergartens not only in making their lives easier, but also in giving them the time they need to build a career. Another concern of the filmmaker, starting from the concrete case of one of the protagonists, is to highlight the differences between the happy present and the not-too-distant past in which someone with her social status should have dedicated herself exclusively to raising children, in hygienic and extremely difficult lives.
The true story of Traian Popovici, a Romanian Mayor that saved 20,000 Jewish People from death during WWII and his friend, who married a Jewish woman against Hitler's orders.
The film's protagonists are the orphaned children taken into custody by the state and institutionalized at Children's House no. 6 from Bucharest. For Mészáros, the concern for the situation of children left orphaned during the Second World War is autobiographical: the director directly experienced the absence of parents in her own childhood.
During the anti-communist uprisings of the late 1950s, a writer of comedic poems against socialism was constantly pursued by Securitate troops.
The three-hour-long documentary covers 25 years in the life of Nicolae Ceaușescu and was made using 1,000 hours of original footage from the National Archives of Romania.