Romanian Film Festival 2024

Sunday, November 10 at 1:00pm | FREE

Presented by Heritage Organization of Romanians in Minnesota (HORA).

ABOUT THE FILM

Actor-turned-director Emanuel Pârvu examines the fallout of a homophobic assault in a rural community from multiple perspectives. Set in a conservative Danube Delta community, a gay teenager's journey of self-discovery clashes with the traditional values upheld by his parents and neighbors. This film was a Palme d’Or contender at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and took home the top prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival for best feature film. 

Emanuel Parvu films a sick and yet so ordinary society, entangled in beliefs from another time, shaped by the gaze of others and the fear of the neighbor's denunciation, tortured by corruption at every level, right down to the gendarmes, more inclined to excuse the facts - and even seek to cover them up - than to find and judge the aggressors.

ABOUT THE ROMANIAN FILM FESTIVAL

The Romanian Film Festival is produced and presented by the Heritage Organization of Romanians in Minnesota (HORA).

The theme of the festival this year is Through the Looking Glass. Lewis Carroll used this metaphor in his writing to describe an unfamiliar or abnormal setting or situation. The phrase can be used to describe a world that suddenly appears unfamiliar, as if things were turned upside down, similar to looking out from inside a mirror to find a world that’s both recognizable and yet turned inside-out. It is like a confusing looking glass world or a mysterious looking glass philosophy.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear is also a well-known phrase that makes us aware of how reflected images are different from the real world. When we look at ourselves in the mirror or at things through a magnifying glass we see a reversed or enlarged version of reality. That is, in a way, what movies do: project it onto the screen into a distorted, sometimes strange parallel world. 

After the fall of communism in 1989, a Romanian New Wave cinema emerged as an austere, realist, and minimalist, often accompanied by black humor type of film. It is an art form that has received a lot of acclaim, almost every year being awarded at prestigious international film festivals. Still, watching a Romanian movie is not a “sit back and relax” type of experience. It requires the audience to do an intense intellectual and emotional exercise and ask themselves questions that might not always get answers. It might be intriguing, controversial, irreverent, shocking, funny, a tragedy and dark comedy at the same time. The world portrayed in them is most often the opposite of normal or what is expected, and the characters’ personalities are hard to decipher. They are convoluted and tormented, enigmatic and insecure in their relationships and self-search. They are portrayed as if through a magnifying glass, as if in a twilight zone, leaving it to the viewer to try to make their own inferences.

We hope you will find this year’s films interesting and will come back for more next year. We will continue the tradition and hope to grow in audience. Making Romanian culture, though its many forms, known to the American public is HORA’s mission.

This year’s edition has been possible through a grant from Minnesota Humanities Center and the generous support of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. This work is funded in part by MHC with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

This year we partnered with the MSP Film Society to offer you amazing films in state of the art cinemas. The festival will take place between November 8-10, in person at The Main Cinema, 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN 55414. All movies are in Romanian language with English subtitles.