Romanian film review – Este Film Festival, American Independent Film Festival & French classics

If you are in Sibiu until Sunday, drop by at ESTE FILM Festival, celebrating its 8th edition. The competition, featuring Romanian short films, is accompanied by a special programme dedicated to Mexican cinema, more precisely Mexico City, and what must be the loveliest mix of recent films, with Bas Devos’ tender Here (easily my favourite of 2023), Aki Kaurismäki’s deadpan Fallen Leaves, and Alice Rohrwacher’s magical La Chimera, all stories of romance and wonder.

In Bucharest, the American Independent Film Festival, also at its 8th edition, will kick off on 7 June (until 13 June, and also travelling to Bran castle), and it brings both fresh fare and some fab classics. The new(er) films include Rose Glass’ lesbian romance/ small-town crime genre bender (featuring bodybuilding) Love Lies Bleeding, Alexander Payne’s period comedy The Holdovers, with a potential to become a perfectly acerbic Christmas classic, and Nathan Temple’s wonderfully sweet, awkward and uplifting Between the Temples. The classics are no less impressive, from Roger Corman’s homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic horror The House of Usher (1960) to another horror classic, David Lynch’s must-see Twin Peaks(1990), season 1, screened in all its brilliant, twisted, mind-spelling glory of seven hours. I cannot praise this series enough; it was formative viewing when it hit TV screens in the 1990s. Once seen, never forgotten. Lynch creates images and moods that burn into your retina and brain.

To bridge the time, Elvire Popescu cinema, always reliably good, has been screening classics to celebrate 100 years of the French Institute in Romania, such as Carl Theodor Dryer’s masterpiece The Passion of Jeanne d’Arc, one of the most shattering, powerful films ever made. On a lighter note, but no less wonderful, François Truffaut is one of THE hugely influential French directors, and his endearing coming-of-age marvel The 400 Blows (1959) has lost none of its freshness. I am particularly happy to see they've also programmed my favourite Truffaut, the hilarious, self-referential Day for Night (1973), about a movie set and all its challenges. A hard-to-direct cat steals the show. Check out the screenings