Romanian helmer Cristi Puiu wins Berlin prize
Cristi Puiu wins best director award in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival.
Leyla Cheamil, 02.03.2020, 13:50
Romanian cinematography shone once
again at the Berlin International Film Festival, one of the most important
events of its kind in the world. 53-year-old Cristi Puiu, who is considered the
initiator of the Romanian New Wave, won the best director award at the weekend
for his latest work, entitled Malmkrog,
at the 70th edition of the Berlinale. The artistic director of the
festival Carlo Chatrian said the Encounters sidebar, a brand new competitive section
aimed at supporting new voices in cinema, brings together films that take the
challenge of shaping a world rather than reproducing it.
In the festival’s Forum section,
Romania was represented by two productions by Radu Jude, Uppercase Print and The Exit
of the Train, the latter being a collaborative work made together with the
historian Adrian Cioflâncă. A coproduction from Romania, Serbia,
Switzerland, Sweden, Bosnia and North Macedonia, Malmkrog is seen as Puiu’s most challenging production to date and
has been hailed by the international media as a great European film, even
heroic. The film is a period title whose script is an adaptation of Three
Conversations (Trois entretiens) by
the Russian philosopher, poet and literary critic Vladimir Solovyov who lived
between 1853 and 1900. Shot over the course of 40 days at the Apafi manor house
in Mălâncrav, in the heart of Romania, the film is based around five
characters. The film is shot in French, with the exception of a few lines in
German, Russian and Hungarian. The décor and costumes recreate the atmosphere
of early 20th century Transylvania. An exploration of cinema and
memory is how Puiu described his work.
This is Puiu’s
second award in Berlin, having won the Golden Bear for short film back in 2004
for Cigarettes and Coffee. One of Romania’s
most prolific film-makers, in 2005 he won the Un Certain Regard trophy at the
Cannes Festival and received two nominations from the European Film Academy.
Cristi Puiu also directed Sieranevada,
Romania’s Oscars bid in 2017. For his cinematographic merits, he was awarded
the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French ambassador
to Romania Henri Paul in 2011 and was decorated with the Order of Merit in Rank
of Knight by the Romanian state in 2006.
Romanian
cinematography is known to do very well at the Berlin Film Festival: Child’s Pose by Călin Peter Netzer won
the Golden Bear in 2013; Aferim! by
Radu Jude won the Silver Bear in 2015; while Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie won the Golden Bear in 2018.
