12:08 East of Bucharest

(A fost sau n’a fost?)

  • In Conversation
  • Mona Nicoară is a documentary filmmaker, writer, film curator, and activist. Her documentary Our School won the top prize at AFI SilverDocs in 2011. She has contributed to periodicals including Harper’s Bazaar and The Guardian as well as human rights publications.

featuring

Mircea Andreescu, Teodor Corban, Ion Sapdaru,

“What’s all the fuss about the revolution? No one cares anymore,” says a young trophy mistress during the sixteenth anniversary of the Romanian revolution. Preparing for another year of getting older, drunker, and lonelier, the bickering threesome of a retiree, a teacher, and a television host pose a related question on the host’s show: Did a true revolution take place in their town, or did everyone conveniently rebel after the regime collapsed? Several argumentative call-ins, insults, drinks, technical breakdowns, Romany musical interludes, and lies later, they may have an answer, or a new question: What difference did it make? Dynamic, sharp-witted, and cut with narrative precision, the Cannes Caméra d’Or–winning 12:08 East of Bucharest is a classic Eastern European allegory of how nations remember (and rewrite) their darkest moments, and how (and why) people need their own stories.

Jason Sanders
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Corneliu Porumboiu
Cinematographer
  • George Dascalescu
  • Marius Panduru
Language
  • Romanian
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 89 mins
Source
  • Kino Lorber