This year’s New York Film Festival Main Slate of recent cinematic productions (September 24 - October 10, 2021) featured two exceptional new Romanian movies: Radu Jude’s Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Radu Muntean’s acclaimed Cannes international premiere Întregalde.
Both screenings of Întregalde were followed by Q&A sessions with the creative team of the film, lead by director Radu Muntean and featuring actors Maria Popistașu and Alexandru Bogdan, and co-screenwriter Alexandru Baciu.
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN
The targets are wide, the satire is broad, and every hit lands and stings in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s angry, gleefully graceless Golden Bear winner from this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Evoking the unsanitized provocations of the great Dušan Makavejev in his prime, Jude crafts an invigorating, infuriating film in three movements that grows in both power and absurdity, centering around the trials of a teacher (Katia Pascariu) at a prestigious Bucharest school whose life and job are upended when her husband accidentally uploads their private sex tape to the internet for all to see. Jude has no compunction about shocking and skewering in his quest to toy with contemporary society’s religious and political hypocrisy, connecting conservative puritanical outrage to an entire history of violence.
A Magnolia Pictures release, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn will hit US cinemas on November 19, 2021 (with support from the RCI).
In the press:
IndieWire (review)
Deadline Hollywood (review)
Awards Radar (review)
Roger Ebert (festival highlights)
The Playlist (review)
Exclaim! (review)
Boston Hassle (review)
Under the Radar Mag (review)
Roger Ebert (top)
UPDATE: We are thrilled to announce that Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn has been selected as Romania’s candidate for the 2022 Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category. Best of luck, Radu Jude and team!
ÎNTREGALDE
In a gripping tale of best intentions gone wrong, leading Romanian filmmaker Radu Muntean (Tuesday, After Christmas, NYFF48) follows a trio of well-meaning aid workers from Bucharest on a food delivery mission to the rural hinterlands of the Întregalde area of Transylvania. Guided off the beaten path by an elderly villager looking for a local sawmill, they find themselves trapped in an unfamiliar, dangerous place and facing the outer limits of their goodwill for each other and for strangers. An inquiry into the contemporary humanitarian impulse that moves like a suspense thriller—but which never quite goes where you expect it to—Muntean’s film knowingly plays off and subverts conventions of both horror films and social realist drama.
A Grasshopper Film release, Întregalde is coming to US theaters next year.
In the press:
Slant Magazine (review)
Awards Watch (review)
CBS News (festival highlights)
wseetonline (festival highlights)
Salon (interview with director Radu Muntean)
Little White Lies (review)
Reverse Shot (review)
Boston Hassle (review)
Unseen Films (review)
Variety (review)
ÎNTREGALDE @ NYFF59 PHOTO GALLERY
The Romanian presence at the 59th edition of the New York Film Festival was supported by the Romanian Cultural Insitute.