4th Toronto-Romanian Film Festiva

ToRo Arts Group is proud to present, in collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, the Fourth Annual Toronto-Romanian Film Festival.


Entitled A DAY IN THE LIFE, the festival is scheduled to run from May 20-22, 2011 and focus primarily on the vicissitudes of Romanian society, as they manifest themselves in the minutia of the everyday, reminding audiences of why the banality of habit in the Romanian cinema continues to intrigue and surprise.

Opening the festival will be Florin Serban’s If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2009), followed by a series of internationally acclaimed recently released features, such as Radu Muntean’s Tuesday, After Christmas (2010), Marian Crisan’s Morgen (2010), Petre Calin Netzer’s Medal of Honour (2009), as well as Andrei Ujica’s film-essay The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010).

The insight into the connection between cinema and society also looks back in time through a program of short documentaries directed by filmmakers such as Dan Pita, Laurentiu Damian, Stere Gulea and curated by art critic and curator at Romania’s National Museum of Modern Art, Oana Tanase. Titled ‘DOC.RO,’ the social dialogue imparted by each short film echoes – among other things - their contemporary concerns of collectivism versus the annihilation of the individual and the excessive overvaluation of work. Censored and banned shortly after their release, these works consciously recall the critical function of the documentary film and ask the viewing public to perform a similarly reflected role. The program also includes two recent documentary films: Matei-Alexandru Mocanu’s The Shukar Collective Projective (2009), nominated for Best Documentary at the 2011 Gopo Awards, and Claudiu Mitcu’s The Merry Circus (2009), a documentary that lovingly looks back on the history of Globus, Romania’s oldest circus.

With RCINY support, actress Maria Popistasu will attend the festival and present the film Tuesday, After Christmas to the Canadian audiences. Director and screenwriter Laurentiu Damian, head of Documentary, Film & TV Directing and Screenwriting and pro-rector of the National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art in Bucharest, will also attend the festival with RCINY support.

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