Romanian film review – Happening Now: Parking, TIFF Sibiu, European Film Festival

If May was a full month for films and festivals, June is a worthy follower. Having premiered at Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), Tudor Giurgiu’s latest feature, Parking, is currently shown in cinemas across the country while the annual European Film Festival will finish its tour in Sibiu between 28 and 30 June, the city that will also host TIFF Sibiu between 27 and 30 June.

Tudor Giurgiu’s fourth feature film is based on Marin Mălaicu-Hondrari’s autobiographical novel Apropierea. Set in Spain, it focuses on a young Romanian writer who works at a car park, reads Spanish literature, and falls madly in love with another outsider, rock musician María. Parking is a beautiful film to look at, and its cast is uniformly good, especially Ariadna Gil and Luis Bermejo as the couple taking young Adrian under their wings. The amour fou is less convincing, i.e. you have probably seen it before in countless movies, but Mihai Smarandache as Adrian and Belén Cuesta as María give their all, and their chemistry is convincing. As a commentary on what it means to be a foreigner, and also on language, it is a welcome entry to the cinema of a country plagued by emigration. It is an assured film by Giurgiu, and, judging by the interviews with all involved, a labour of love, and you can watch it in most cinemas. Cinemagia.ro features all venues and screening times.

Organised by the Romanian Cultural Institute in collaboration with EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture, the annual European Film Festival showcases the year’s most talked-about and awarded European productions, traditionally checking the pulse of the continent. This year’s 23rd edition will finish its tour in Sibiu, between 28 and 30 June (the main programme in Bucharest was complemented by events in Râmnicu Vâlcea, Târgu Mureș, and Chișinău). Do not miss Alice Rohrwacher’s sublimefolk tale Happy as Lazzaro, Benedikt Erlingsson’s pitch-black-humoured climate change thriller Woman at War, or the fast and supremely entertaining polit-thriller