Elena Martin

Filmed across Italy, Moldova, and Romania, Tata is a raw portrait of a family locked in a relentless struggle against toxic masculinity and the tale of a daughter’s poignant quest to break the cycle for herself, the next generation, and even for the one who hurt her.

A semi-fictional correspondence between two women: one goes to Iran in 1979 to topple the Shah; the other experiences the onerous years of Ceaușescu’s Romania. Their biographies run in parallel via images of everyday life and videograms of revolution.

Imaginary Youth follows three teenagers through their final years of high school, before, during, and after the Covid confinement. While pondering about leaving Romania after they finish school, Una – an actress, Habet – a trapper and Stefania – an environmental activist get caught in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis. Personal dramas and dilemmas unfold, as the three try to make sense of growing up and what’s happening around them. Who’s gonna make it?

In the summer of 1989, the 13th edition of the World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Pyongyang. Thousands of socialist youth from 177 countries celebrated their belief in a better society and international solidarity.

Rodica is a Romanian expat living in Belgium who works hard to support her family. Her love for her children is at once powerful and suffocating. Shot in stark black and white, and with the camera staying within close proximity to its protagonists, the film’s minimalist approach offers a glimpse into the complex intimacies of this family. This is a film about love, fear, anxiety and the complicated emotions that emerge at their intersection.

While helping another woman search for her birth mother, a filmmaker reopens her own family story. In searching for her missing sisters, she unearths a legacy of abuse and exploitation, and begins to ask: can the creative power of self-authorship help her rewrite the scripts she has inherited?

Two filmmakers follow a businessman turned eco-activist as he exposes Romania's timber mafia. Their journey takes a dramatic turn when, in the middle of a forest, the three are attacked by a group of 12 angry men. The cameras are destroyed, and all footage is lost. Faced with this harsh reality, each of them tries to manage the situation as best they can, confronting their own doubts and limitations.

Silvia (35) and her daughter Mara (9) enter Bucharest at midnight. They ran away from home after a violent family conflict. They plan to stay with Silvia’s sister, at least until the next day. Throughout this eventful night, Silvia discovers that everyone has already decided what kind of help she needs. For Mara it’s a night that changes the way she perceives the adults around her.

Raluca, 26, freshly returned from Berlin to a spring-warm Bucharest hit by the pandemic, works as a home-deliverer for supermarket products. One day one of her clients turns out to be a young guy with a good sense of humor and a cute cat, so when Raluca’s bike ride through a nightmarish traffic in Bucharest and guys grabbing her on every street corner, she becomes slightly idyllic bearing the hope of a new love story. Encouraged by her girlfriends, Raluca finds a pretext to invite herself into the guy’s house, but the imagination is almost always more interesting than reality.