Romanian film review – Eastern power: Film Festival Cottbus

There has been an exciting season of film events and here's the latest. But to make it more cosmopolitan, this one is not taking place in Romania but in Germany. The Festival of East European Cinema in Cottbus, an hour away from Berlin, has established itself as one of the most important European festivals promoting the contemporary cinema of this area. As with every year, it has quite a stately collection of Romanian features, not to mention an overall solid selection of films produced in Central and Eastern Europe or focusing on these countries. If you are in Germany at the moment, or thinking about going there, this should be on your must-do list for the following week (Cottbus starts on Tuesday, 5

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of November and ends on Sunday, the 10

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. The long features screened have already premiered in Romania and some are even running in cinemas. Some of them are rather average, like the confusing (and confused) coming-of-age story in Wolf/Lupu or Roxanne, a tame thriller/family drama. But there's also Igor Cobileanski's Moldavian thriller about a young man trying to leave behind his criminal past, the raw and tense La limita de jos a cerului/The Unsaved. And this one is a winner. No surprise, since Cobileanski has co-written it with the excellent Corneliu Porumboiu. He also has a good short feature running in the shorts competition, Colecția de arome/The FlavoursCollection. The shorts compilation also includes Ruxandra Ghițescu's clever Probleme de familie/Family Problems and Andrei Tănase's endearing Claudiu și crapii/Claudiu and the Fish. Being a fan of the latter, I am so happy to see it taking on Europe. The rest of the titles in the competition or side programmes are an Eastern cinema fan's dream. That and the special events and parties, combined with Cottbus' intriguing mix of multicultural past, picturesque sights and former Soviet 'flair' will certainly make for another blasting edition. By Ioana Moldovan, columnist, ioana.moldovan@romania-insider.com