In May 2005, a 153-minute film about an old man being shuttled between Bucharest hospitals on a Saturday night opened at Cannes' Un Certain Regard. He did not survive the night. Neither did the way Eastern European cinema had been written about until then.
The film was “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”. Within two years a generation of Romanian filmmakers, most born between 1965 and 1980, most trained at UNATC in Bucharest, had collected a Palme d'Or, two Camera d'Ors, and the slightly unsteady label “the Romanian New Wave”. Twenty years later the wave is still arriving. Radu Jude won the Berlinale's Best Screenplay award in February 2025.
Long takes. Real time. Hospital corridors and government offices. Cameras that stay at the back of the room. Plots that look like nothing is happening until the moment everything has. The films are often funny and savage. The Romanian sense of humor is the dry, grieving kind.
The label was applied from outside, mostly by French critics, on analogy to the “Nouvelle Vague”. Most of the directors dislike it. They share some sensibilities, and success, not a manifesto.
The Six Directors
Cristi Puiu
A 62-year-old man calls an ambulance with a stomachache; the film is the next eight hours. Watch it for the way Luminița Gheorghiu, as the paramedic, becomes quietly heroic. Follow with “Sieranevada”, three hours of a family wake, shot through hallway and door frames.
Cristian Mungiu
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”
Bucharest, 1987. Two students, an illegal abortion, one night. Palme d'Or, and a dinner-table long shot that will have you thinking and talking for weeks. Follow with “R.M.N” (2022).
Corneliu Porumboiu
“12:08 East of Bucharest”, in which a small-town TV host tries to determine whether his town actually participated in the 1989 revolution.
Radu Jude
Younger, angrier, some of the most original work happening in Europe right now. Archive footage, intertitles, TikTok logic, two-hour traffic-jam shots. Start with “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”. Berlinale Golden Bear, schoolteacher's leaked tape, forty-minute middle-act essay-film glossary.
Călin Peter Netzer.
“Child's Pose”. Berlinale Golden Bear. A wealthy Bucharest mother tries to keep her adult son out of prison after a fatal car accident.
The third generation is here. Bogdan George Apetri's “Miracle” extends Puiu's two-act structure into small-town crime. Bogdan Mirică's “Dogs” takes the deadpan into northern-border noir. Alexander Nanau's “Collective”, Oscar-nominated, is the documentary companion to all of it. Andrei Ujică's three-hour archive montage “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu.”
Where to Watch
Most canonical titles are on MUBI, Criterion Channel, or rentable.
Check on Nous.Film to see for the latest streaming information or where you can rent them.
