Last night was the Romanian NewWave Cinema’s first film night at the University of Toronto. The night consisted of 6 short films with one longer feature film. All the films were shown in Romanian with English subtitles. I had never seen any Romanian films so it was an interesting night to see some of the different aspects of Romanian culture. I went with my friends Alex and Iuliana. Alex was convinced that is not possible to have a happy ending in Romanian films and none of the films shown disappointed this expectation. I’ve never been a huge fan of short films because I find that it takes more than 10-15mins to develop good characters and I’m also interested in interesting characters.

So for me the highlight of the night was the Marilena from P7 film. The film is a very interesting portrayal of life and the dialog, even with the English translation shows a lot of the grit of living in large Romanian cities. The film focuses on a group of boys, lead by Andrei, who believes he’s in love with one of prostitutes he sees in his neighbourhood. And of course things don’t end well for Andrei or his Marilena.

A good night and I’d like to go back to more. Hopefully future showings will feature longer films and have a better quality display. Watching the films through a laptop projector was less than ideal.