New Romanian cinema: new realism for the new millennium

An exciting cinematic New Wave emerged from Romanian in 2001 with the film Stuff and Dough (Puiu). Following was a slew of films produced in Romania that garnered international attention, winning important festival awards including the Palme d’Or at Cannes for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu 2007). New Romanian cinema is identifiably realist however it adopts certain tactics that lie outside traditional realist theory, including intermediality and meticulous framing. I argue that New Romanian cinema has been influenced by modernism and post-modernism to emerge as a new form of realist cinema, relevant to the 21st century.