The first Vancouver Romanian Film Festival will take place at the VIFF Centre this week—and every movie is free! The Consulate General of Romania in Vancouver is partnering with the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York to present seven films from Monday (December 1) to Thursday (December 4).
“For the first time ever, Vancouver audiences will have the chance to immerse themselves in the unmistakable style and emotional power of contemporary Romanian cinema—one of Europe’s most acclaimed film movements,” the Romanian Cultural Institute states on its website.
“This new festival brings together a curated selection of award-winning films and documentaries that have captivated audiences around the world through their honesty, depth, and cinematic precision.”
The festival will open with The New Year That Never Came at 6:30 p.m. on Monday. Directed by Bogdan Mureşanu, it includes six intertwined stories over a single day in Bucharest on the eve of the revolution that toppled Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989. According to IMDb, it has won 26 awards, including the Venice Horizons Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
It is being screened on Great Union Day, which Romanians celebrate to mark the union of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918. On this day, a unanimous decree by 1,228 elected representatives demanded equality for all nationalities and religions following an earlier Romanian revolution.
The Great Union Day showing of The New Year That Never Came will be followed by three evenings of Romanian features at the VIFF Centre.
Watch the trailer for The New Year That Never Came.
Two Romanian films per night
Teodora Mihai’s Traffic will be screened at 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday. It’s about a poverty-stricken expatriate Romanian couple who plan to rob an art museum in Western Europe.
That will be followed by Adelina Șuvagău’s Box of Freedom at 8:50 pm. There will be a post-show Q&A with Șuvagău about her film, which is about a banned female comedian who flees the country and performs comedic material in a shipping container bound for Canada.
Watch the trailer for Box of Freedom.
On Wednesday, Mihai Mincan’s Milk Teeth, which is set near the end of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, will be screened at 6:15 p.m. It’s about a 10-year-old girl who witnesses the disappearance of her sister.
The next film, Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc’s documentary Tata, starts at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Vdovîi, a Moldovan journalist, receives a message from her dad, who’s a migrant labourer in Italy. The VIFF Centre website describes it as “a raw documentary portrait of a family locked in a relentless struggle against toxic masculinity”, with Vdovîi determined to break a cycle of family violence.
Watch the trailer for Tata.
Ilie Năstase on the big screen
The final evening of the festival begins with something for tennis fans. In Nasty, Directors Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu, and Tudor D Posecu examine the colourful career of Ilie Năstase, a Romanian tennis superstar of the 1970s. It will be screened at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
The final film of the festival, Comatogen, will be shown at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday. Directed by Igor Cobileanschi, it’s about a single mother and nurse in search of a large amount of money to prevent her 22-year-old son from being sent to prison.
Canada is home to a growing population of people with Romanian ancestry. According to the 2021 census, there were 215,885 Romanian Canadians living in this country at that time. Among the most famous are tennis player Bianca Andreescu, actor Tatiana Maslany, former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon, and B.C. violinist and composer Lache Cercel.
In addition, a former Vancouver Symphony Orchestra musical director, the late Sergiu Comissiona, was born in Romania.
Watch the trailer for Comatogen.
Festival details
The Consulate General of Romania in Vancouver and the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York will present the Vancouver Romanian Film Festival at the VIFF Centre from Monday (December 1) to Thursday (December 4). For more information, visit the VIFF Centre website. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and Bluesky @pancouver.bsky.social. The publication is also on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
