Popular reviews

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  Review by Michael Sicinski ★★★★ 2

  [8]

  After admiring Puiu's breakthrough film, The Death of Mister Lazarescu, without ever really liking it, and finding that I had genuine antipathy for his nihilistic follow-up Aurora, I am elated to have found the Cristi Puiu film that I can get behind 100%. It would be glib to call Sieranevada a kind of synthesis of the two earlier movies, partly because there is considerable variation in Puiu's cinematic methods. Lazarescu, while grueling, was characterized by a propulsive march toward the grave, the sense that time was not on its protagonist's side. Typical art-film longeurs, when they occured, could provoke a mild panic for this reason -- a ramped-up tension that Cristian Mungiu exploited in more conventional ways in 4…

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  Review by 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕞 (𝕃𝕖𝕠) 𝕧𝕒𝕟 𝕕𝕖𝕣 ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕟 ★★★★½

  IFFR Film 4

  Added to: 2016 Ranked
  Added to: Masterpieces of the 21st Century
  Added to: People-being-People List

  The sole reason you shouldn't make a "Best of"-list as soon as the year is over. If I didn't randomly pick this three hour epic out of all the possible films at the IFFR, I would have sorely missed out on something great.

  Just like the two other three hour masterpieces of 2016, Toni Erdmann and American Honey, Christi Puiu's intimate drama of a family trying to commemorate a man's passing is ludicrous in its dark humor but succeeds in creating an impossible balance with the equally tense drama, just like Erdmann did earlier this year. For another comparison: imagine Vinterberg's Festen,…

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  Review by Maria ★★★★½

  The most Romanian film I've ever seen. And perhaps, out of all the great Romanian New Wave films out there, the most necessary and immediately relevant. It captures an entire nation so well—its trauma, its beliefs and traditions, its sense of humour. In the 3 hour runtime, we barely leave the family's crowded apartment, the camera following people's frantic movements in and out of rooms, their arguments, their pain and fears boiling over, and it all leads to a dinner—pomană—for the deceased patriarch, a dinner constantly kept out of reach because of tradition, because of a missing priest, because of people coming and going, because things and people and feelings keep getting in the way. And all you can do is laugh at the absurdity of it all.

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  Review by Jeremy Heilman ★★★★

  Forget Toni Erdmann… the most damning indictment of this year’s George Miller-led Cannes jury is that this ambitious and astoundingly original family drama went home without a major prize. A three-hour epic inquisition into the nature of truth that barely manages to leave the same small cramped apartment, Sieranevada is undoubtedly a major work, all the more surprising for being so unlike Romanian director Puiu’s other features… or many other features at all. The most distinctive aspect of the film, by far, is its unique camerawork, which bobs in and out of rooms, peeks around corners and drifts from one conversation to another as the dozen or more visitors to an apartment hosting a funeral dart around on screen, squabbling…

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  Review by Abhishek ★★★★½

  Replete with genuine emotions, intimacies, agitations, and timely black humor in its hyper-realistic ambience, Puiu's film makes the grade to exhibit a highly compelling, flawed family sketch articulating societal maladies in a fairly sardonic way. Exalted by significantly excelling filmic narration and distinctly stylized camerawork, "Sieranevada" stands out in engendering a familiarity between the viewers and its characters, and simply the naturalness of that, while prolonging its transcendence that irks us, stir us and even regales us.

  Delineating and ruminating on family dynamics and societal complexities- both at once, this film doesn't shy away from accenting the country's political context and the out-turns through its thematic and structural intimations eliciting the sense of bleak reality and that claustrophobic feeling the characters are having. All in all, being a cinematic exercise that's simultaneously explicit and ambiguous, "Sieranevada" pictures an image of joys, miseries, truths and absurdities of life while purveying another essential and unabating work of Romanian cinema.

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  Review by Jairo Rodríguez ★★★★★ 4

  Tres horas de gente abriendo puertas cuando deberían dejarlas cerradas y cerrándolas cuando deberían dejarlas abiertas.

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  Review by Calum Marsh ★★★½ 1

  Cristi Puiu is the kind of realist, like Andrey Zvyagintsev or Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose realism always seems to mean something more. The manner is a scrupulous naturalism: the takes are long and patient, the acting unaffected, the drama decidedly kitchen-sink. But there is a poetic character to Puiu’s austerity, a deep current of symbolism beneath the plain veneer, that widens the dimensions of the commonplace, and supplements the vérité view. His films fix on the banal and everyday and yet — without the slightest compromise of their naturalist integrity — reach beyond them, to realms social, political, even philosophical. They don’t merely feel true. They pursue higher truths.

  This tendency is manifested early in Sieranevada, Puiu’s sprawling, prickly, mordantly…

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  Review by willy vvvv

  you gotta really know what you're doing to be able to keep a 3 hour film of people walking & talking around an appartment this engaging. there's a lil dip in pace towards the middle but it picks right back up in a major way from there. romanian goodness

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  Review by freelunch ★★★★½ 4

  That politically tinged family reunion that everyone dreads condensed into a three hour chamber piece. It’s not just any family reunion, however. Set a few days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, a Romanian family gathers to commemorate the death of their patriarch - who takes along some open secrets to his grave. Topics of death, war, religion and infidelity loom over this get together and the results are nearly nonstop heated debates of these topics and I have to say - I found it fucking riveting.

  I just love how condensed the visual style of the Romanian New Wavers is, despite being so expansive in theme. The political discussions range from Romanian, French to American and the camera…

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  Review by Avirup ★★★★

  84/100

  There's something so enchanting about dysfunctional family talking, arguing, walking around in a small apartment for three hours. Reminded me of my own family gatherings(will probably do to many) but obviously minus the political and 9/11 theories discussions, an communist activist aunt, someone's affairs and them getting blowjobs coming out. This is so wonderfully choreographed, camera just naturally follows and captures the chaos. There's political commentary and religious critique but certainly the best thing about this is the family drama. It very brilliantly portrays the family gatherings, it's funny and very authentic. It's not an easy film sure but once you get used to its rhythm the film is absolutely great and I think it will improve on a…

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  Review by Stelletlicht ★★★★½

  كريستيان بيو وصلت افلامه لدرجة عالية جداً من الواقعية
   نادره هي الافلام الي تحاكي المشاهد بتفاصيل اللحظة بهذا الشكل. في افلام كريستيان بيو ما اشوف ممثلين ما اشوف شخصيات، في افلامه اشوف ناس. ناس قريبين مننا ومن تصرفاتنا ومن ردود افعالنا، كأنهم مرأتنا، كلٌ وله اهتمامه وكلٌ له مشاكله رغم ان الفيلم حبكته تخلينا شبه متأكدين بأن ثيم الموت اساس الفيلم لكن محتواه بعيد كل البعد عن الموت، يمكن يكون اقرب إلى الحياه من الموت، ولا زلت متسائل كيف بيو يقدر يطلع ممثليه ويخرجهم إلى الشاشه بهذي الدرجة من السيطرة والواقعية..

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  Review by Florin Scanlon ★★★★½ 2

  After the difficult, unusual yet commanding Aurora, director Cristi Puiu's future in the movies acquired a note of unpredictability. From that point onwards, it seemed as if his career could go anywhere, that his movies could hold unexpected elements that would baffle and unsettle, it seemed as if he would be willing to go to unexpected, unknown places. It was his Only God Forgives, his turning point of sorts, if I'm allowed a completely unrelated comparison (in terms of style). It comes as a surprise then to see him return back to something like Drive (again, only talking about career trajectory) instead of pursuing the path he found. Sieranevada is much closer to Moartea domnului Lăzărescu (The Death of Mr.…