Metrograph

Responsible more than any other film for establishing Romanian film as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage with its lauded Cannes premiere, Puiu’s second feature, shot in a perfect simulacra of in-the-moment vérité style, is a scabrous satire of broken institutions that begins with an ailing 62-year-old pensioner, bachelor, cat owner, and toper Dante Remus Lazarescu (Ioan Fiscuteanu) calling an ambulance and descending on an infernal journey through the public health system’s concentric circles of hell. “A tour de force… [It’s] staged hyper-reality offers a stunning dialectic between drama and artifice.” —J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

Distributor: Coproduction Office