Elena Martin

Blue

Rodica is a Romanian expat living in Belgium who works hard to support her family. Her love for her children is at once powerful and suffocating. Shot in stark black and white, and with the camera staying within close proximity to its protagonists, the film’s minimalist approach offers a glimpse into the complex intimacies of this family. This is a film about love, fear, anxiety and the complicated emotions that emerge at their intersection.

Imaginary Youth

Imaginary Youth follows three teenagers through their final years of high school, before, during, and after the Covid confinement. While pondering about leaving Romania after they finish school, Una – an actress, Habet – a trapper and Stefania – an environmental activist get caught in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis. Personal dramas and dilemmas unfold, as the three try to make sense of growing up and what’s happening around them. Who’s gonna make it?

Between the Edges of the Day

Silvia (35) and her daughter Mara (9) enter Bucharest at midnight. They ran away from home after a violent family conflict. They plan to stay with Silvia’s sister, at least until the next day. Throughout this eventful night, Silvia discovers that everyone has already decided what kind of help she needs. For Mara it’s a night that changes the way she perceives the adults around her.

Between Revolutions

A semi-fictional correspondence between two women: one goes to Iran in 1979 to topple the Shah; the other experiences the onerous years of Ceaușescu’s Romania. Their biographies run in parallel via images of everyday life and videograms of revolution.

Berliner Kindl

Raluca, 26, freshly returned from Berlin to a spring-warm Bucharest hit by the pandemic, works as a home-deliverer for supermarket products. One day one of her clients turns out to be a young guy with a good sense of humor and a cute cat, so when Raluca’s bike ride through a nightmarish traffic in Bucharest and guys grabbing her on every street corner, she becomes slightly idyllic bearing the hope of a new love story. Encouraged by her girlfriends, Raluca finds a pretext to invite herself into the guy’s house, but the imagination is almost always more interesting than reality.