my latest films
documentary films
Every year in a small community in the Banat region, people prepare for the start of Easter lent. They will be all attending a mockup wedding for which the men dress up and play all the roles of the wedding party, including the bride. Adopting the style of wedding home videos, the film lovingly satirizes the style and tradition of such wedding films, simultaneously celebrating the ethnographic traditions of the community it observes.
Screened at: Astra film Festival 2018; SIPA 2018: Culese din Balkani 2017.
Mockup Wedding 41 min. (2017)
Best image award: Astra Film Festival 2013
Audience Award: Verzio Hungary 2014
Best film: Etnofilm Rovinj: Croatia, 2014
Screened at more than 100 events worldwide.
Valley of Sighs (57 min.) 2013
Between 1943 and 1945, 25.000 Romani people were deported to Transnistria by the Antonescu regime. Half of them soon died of hunger, cold or other causes. 70 years later, a few survivors, who were of a very young age at that time, recall and give a sad account of those terrible events. The film aims to reconstruct the journey, places and tragic experiences of the past. Interviews with the members of the Ukrainian community from Transnistria expand the stories of the Roma survivors and transform an area nowadays apparently trivial in a place of anthropological value, memories and tears.
“Once upon a time there was a poor man…”
A biographical anthropological video-documentary, which focuses on Ion Roman (Broscatu), roma storyteller from Romania. Broscatu is a broomstick maker, a family head, a sociable and religious person and an ex convict. The film explores the various types of stories that Broscatu tells to the author, his relationship with the filmmaker and also the metareflexive relation between Broscatu and his own film. The film tries to address a question: how can stories be meaningful for anthropological research and how can we explore a person throughout his relationship between camera, stories and film process.
Screened at:
NAFA 2013
Culese din Balkani 2016
Used for teaching in anthropology departments
Broscatu, The Storyteller (62 min.) 2011
Best student film: GIEFF 2012
Best film: Etnofilm Rovinj: Croatia, 2013
Screened at numerous ethnographic film festivals worldwide.
Looking at themselves:
Babaluda Luda (33 min. 2012)
The feedback provided by the people involved in the Babaluda Feast, a winter ritual that takes place on the Apuseni Mountains of Transilvania, turned out to be very important in offering an insight to the ways in which the feast was represented by the visual ethnographer. By recording the sharing of visual ethnography, that was arranged in big groups in large screening rooms, but also in small groups in private houses, the film tries to elucidate the ways in which a visual ethnographic narrative is constructed.
The Street Musician is the story of Peter, a Roma migrant accordion player from Romania, which spends most of the time of the year singing in the streets of Göttingen, Germany. He has lived in Göttingen for almost 20 years now and he is a well-known character of the city as he is singing in the main market but also at private parties. Despite his relatively safe living and success as a street musician, Peter holds inside a deeper burden. Home sickness never abandons the nostalgic soul of an artist.
Screened at:
Astra Film Festival 2013
Used for teaching in anthropology departments
The Street Musician (17 min.) 2012
I wanted to share with you my work as a filmmaker.
Over the years I've produced directed and filmed many documentaries that you can watch here for free and in full length. Enjoy and let me know what you think. All films have English subtitles.