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“I thought about exploiting the pandemic to tell this story of intimacy,” Romanian-born, Swedish-based director Ştefan Constantinescu told Variety, after the screening of “Man and Dog.” The movie was showcased in the main competition of this week’s Torino Film Festival.

Constantinescu’s debut follows Doru (Bodgan Dumitrache) who suddenly leaves his work in Göteborg, and returns to Romania with a growing load of jealousy on his back, after receiving a mysterious text message claiming that his wife (Ofelia Opii) is being unfaithful. His anxiety will escalate to gigantic proportions, trapping him into a meticulous investigation.

“I exploited the pandemic to build up tension and add further pressure on Doru,” he pointed out. However, he also disclosed that the first draft of the script was penned by his co-writer Andrei Epure back in 2015, well ahead of the healthcare crisis.

“We kept on speaking about it for a while. After two,...

‘Utama’ won the World Cinema grand jury prize at Sundance earlier this year.

Bolivian director Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama won both the best film prize and the audience award at the 21st edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival which closed yesterday, Sunday June 26.

Distributed internationally by Alpha Violet, the Bolivian-Uruguayan-French co-production about an elderly Indigenous man trying to survive in the Bolivian highlands, premiered earlier this year in Sundance where it received the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema: Dramatic Competition. It is Grisi’s debut feature.

Iceland’s Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson won the best director prize...

‘Utama’ won the World Cinema grand jury prize at Sundance earlier this year.

Bolivian director Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama won both the best film prize and the audience award at the 21st edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival which closed yesterday, Sunday June 26.

Distributed internationally by Alpha Violet, the Bolivian-Uruguayan-French co-production about an elderly Indigenous man trying to survive in the Bolivian highlands, premiered earlier this year in Sundance where it received the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema: Dramatic Competition. It is Grisi’s debut feature.

Iceland’s Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson won the best director prize...

Bogdan George Apetri’s “Miracle” took home the top prize in the Romanian Days competition at the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival, which saw nine first-time directors among the 12 filmmakers competing in the annual showcase of domestic cinema.

It’s the first time such a formidable number of debuts have featured in the competition, offering a snapshot of what the fest’s artistic director Mihai Chirilov describes as a “balanced landscape” of new and established voices in Romania’s celebrated film industry.

It’s been nearly two decades since Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005) won the Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival, kickstarting what would come to be known as the Romanian New Wave. Two years later, Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for his abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” cementing the movement’s status and effectively punching the tickets of Mungiu, Puiu...

Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s “Utama,” which won the grand jury prize in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at Sundance this year, took home top honors at the closing ceremony of the Transilvania Film Festival on Saturday night.

Grisi’s feature debut tells the story of an elderly couple in the Bolivian highlands who refuse to relocate to the city despite the constant threat of drought. In a glowing review, Variety’s Peter Debruge described the film as a “sublime, quietly elegiac” character study that “looks quite unlike anything else.”

“By relying on the simplicity, purity and poetry of his cinematic approach, the director takes the audience on a universal journey, talking about the essence of life, death and everything in between,” said the Transilvania jury, praising a film that “gives the audience a deep, multilayered feeling of how fragile our future is.” “Utama” was also feted with the festival’s Audience Award.

Energized by the second strong year in a row for Scandinavian cinema, a hybrid 45th Göteborg Film Festival will open with Christoffer Sandler’s “So Damn Easy Going” in main Nordic Competition, alongside Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” and Eskil Vogt’s “The Innocents.”

Despite new theater capacity controls announced by Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson on Monday, Göteborg, which had anticipated the tighter restrictions, is pressing ahead with its plans for an on-site festival with select online screenings of some 50 films for Sweden, festival artistic director Jonas Holmberg told Variety.

Luca Guadagnino will receive an Honorary Dragon Award, attending the festival and participating in an on-stage conversation after the screening of “Call Me By Your Name” on Feb. 3.

Playing Lady Jessica Atreides in “Dune,” Rebecca Ferguson (“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”) will pick up a Nordic Honorary Dragon Award.

Produced by Sweden’s Cinenic Film, the company behind Sundance...

Variety's Boyd van Hoeij notes that Critics' Week has lined up first-time directors "almost exclusively" for its 2012 edition. Notes, links and so on will be added over the coming hours and days:

Competition

Features

Vasan Bala's Peddlers. The Critics' Week synopsis: "A ghost town, Mumbai, inhabited by millions. A lady on a mission, a man living a lie, an aimless drifter. They collide. Some collisions are of consequence, some not, either ways the city moves on."

Antonio Méndez Esparza's Aquí y Allá. CW: Pedro returns home to his small village in Guerrero, Mexico after having worked for several years in the Us. Even though the village is expecting a bountiful harvest, they're still preoccupied with opportunities north of the border.

Alejandro Fadel's Los Salvajes. CW: "Five teenagers violently escape a reformatory school in an Argentinean province.... They hunt to feed, rob houses they come across, do drugs, bathe in the river,...

Sunday, December 5th concludes the 5th annual Romanian Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City. This year hosts The Romanian Cultural Institute and curator Mihai Chirilov added the moniker “A New Beginning,” in appreciation of the recent success of what has been dubbed the “Romanian New Wave.” This year, Cristi Puiu, arguably the one who started it all with his 2006 debut The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, returns with his second feature Aurora. The three-hour long film premiered earlier this year at the New York Film Festival to resoundingly positive reviews. Also returning from Nyff are Radu Montean’s Tuesday, After Christmas (opening May 25 at Film Forum) and Andrei Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, which opened the festival. All three were standouts this past May on the Croisette. Bobby Paunescu, producer of “Aurora” and “Lazarescu”, screens his directorial debut Francesca. Rounding out the “Romanian New Wave” roster of attendees is Razvan Radulescu,...