Corneliu Porumboiu to Be Special Guest at Visions du Réel: His Films ‘Cast an Offbeat, Critical Eye on the Changes to Romanian Society’

variety.com:

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu will be the special guest at the 56th edition of documentary festival Visions du Réel, which runs April 4 – 13 in Nyon, Switzerland.

There will be a retrospective of all Porumboiu’s feature films, and he will deliver a masterclass. “Imbued with dark humor, Corneliu Porumboiu’s films play with the absurdity integral to Romanian society, which threw off the yoke of communism with the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu and the revolution of 1989, instantly supplanting it with unbridled capitalism,” the festival said in a statement.

Porumboiu has released 13 films (including six shorts), during a career that spans almost 20 years. He made a name for himself on the international scene with his first feature length film, “12:08 East of Bucharest,” winner of the prestigious Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 2006.

His feature films, which include “Police, Adjective” (2009) and “The Treasure” (2015), were also praised by critics and earned awards at Cannes, consolidating his position as one of the greats of new Romanian cinema – alongside Cristi Puiu, Lucian Pintilie, Radu Jude, Andrei Ujica and Cristian Mungiu. “Inspired by a realistic, political approach, Porumboiu’s cinema scrutinizes Romania’s recent social history, mischievously taking on its sometimes tragicomic dimension.