Romanian film review – Berlinale impressions, part I: The Forest Is Like the Mountains

And it's a wrap! The Berlin Film Festival ended on Sunday and its definite highlight, although curiously not the grand winner, was Richard Linklater's wonderful Boyhood. Linklater's ambitious undertaking of staging a boy's life from childhood to his college years, shooting several scenes every year with a constant cast for the past 12 years is not just admirable in its scope but has also resulted in an immensly touching and rewarding story. You should rush to the cinema as soon as it opens in Romania, this film is a miracle. But let's get back to our Romanian focus: three Romanian (or Romania-connected) films premiered at this year's Berlinale: Corneliu Porumboiu's latest trick, the playful football documentary Al doilea joc/The Second Game; the German experimental documentary Le beau danger, starring the internationally acclaimed writer Norman Manea; and a German-Romanian co-production about a Transylvanian Roma village. The entries were all part of the Forum, a section dedicated mainly to experimental, innovative, political and genre-breaking filmmaking. Which would be a good label for the first two movies but less for Pădurea e ca muntele, vezi?/The Forest Is Like the Mountains, a classical, observational documentary about a Roma community near Sfântu Gheorghe. The directing duo Christiane Schmidt and Didier Guillain visited Romania in 2004 and passed through the small village of Vîlcele, where they quickly befriended the film's main protagonists, Elena and Aron Lingurar. After becoming the godparents of their youngest daughter, Anamaria, the two film students returned to Vîlcele every year and decided to document the lives of the family and their neighbors. The Lingurars are part of a community of Adventist Roma struggling to make a living through traditional crafts in a time in which these are slowing becoming obsolete. Their dreams, disappointments and joys are at the center of the delicate, unhurried film which artfully connects the picturesque, dreamy landscape with the destinies of the humans inhabiting it. Filmed in warm colors and attentive to everyday beauty and humor, The Forest Is Like the Mountains is an engaging documentary which gives its protagonists room to tell their stories while the directorial intervention is kept to a minimum. What I have been wondering throughout the screening though, is whether the film does have anything particularly relevant to say about a community which has been the focus of increased attention in recent years, especially in foreign productions. The doc is curiously unwilling to dig deeper into the circumstances of these peoples lives and sticks to a predominantly passive-observant and candid perspective. Issues which are seminal to this community, like discrimination, poverty, and the inability to keep up with contemporary working requirements are given but a brief, uncommented treatment. Ultimately I can't shake the feeling that this is a beautiful but harmless film which lacks the emotional punch of the similarly themed