As the going out options are getting fewer, the online offer is getting richer, with film fans having plenty of options. We outline some of the available programs and platforms below.  

After running open-air screenings this summer, the Elvire Popesco cinema at the French Institute in Bucharest has rolled out an online program called Elvire chez vous. Every week, several productions are available for streaming for one night, starting 19:00 and until mid-night, on Eventbook. Thursdays and Fridays are usually reserved for recent Romanian productions, Saturdays for French films that weren't distributed in local cinemas, and Sundays for recent European productions. The program started on November 12 with Journey Around the Home in 60 days, a series of shorts of Romanian directors made during the spring lockdown. The upcoming films are listed here.

The Czech Center is showing this November the Documentary Mondays and Fiction Tuesdays programs online. The films can be watched for free on the platform DAFilms.com, where they are available for 24 hours, thus extending the reach of the programs to the entire country, and not just Bucharest as it happened with the offline versions. After Miloslav Šmídmajer's documentary Milos Forman: What doesn't kill you about the Oscar-winning Czech director, and Mihai Mincan and George Chiper's The Man Who Would Be Free (Omul care a vrut să fie liber) about a young teacher in the 1970s Romania, Documentary Mondays will next show Adéla Komrzý's Viva Video, Video Viva, focused on Czechoslovakia's video art in the 1980s, and Johana Ožvold's The Sound is Innocent, about the "meaning, function and significance of the world of electronic and experimental sound. Meanwhile, Fiction Tuesdays spotlight director Jiří Menzel, who passed away this September. Four of his films are part of the program: Capricious Summer, A Cottage near the Woods, Those Wonderful Men with Crank, and Cutting It Short. More details about the program here.

In its turn, the Cervantes Institute is continuing the series of online screenings with another program this November. Nuevas cinefilias, held in a partnership with the Seville European Film Festival, encompasses four films of young Spanish directors such as Adrián Orr, Mònica Rovira, Anxos Fazáns, and Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega. The movies are available for free for 48 hours on the institute's Vimeo channel and come with English, French, and Italian subtitles, among other languages. The program is available here.

The Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest is also showing a program of films available for streaming for free. Giovedì al Cinema runs until December 10 and covers films such as Francesco Falaschi's As Needed (Quanto basta), Sergio Castellitto's Lucky (Fortunata), or Giancarlo Fontana and Giuseppe Stasi's Put Grandma in the Freezer (Metti la nonna in the freezer). The full program is available here.

Many film festivals have switched to online editions this year or have included the option of seeing some movies online. After animation festival Animest, ending on November 15, the latest one to make its program available online is Green Tech Film Festival, an event promoting care towards the environment and green technologies. It runs from November 16 to November 22, and it will screen films such as To Teach a Bird to Fly, a documentary-fiction film exploring bird extinction and climate change, the documentary Blue Heart, looking at communities who are fighting against the construction of dams on wild rivers, and Artifishal, a look at the challenges ecologists and conservationists face in the salmon-hatchery industry.

The National Film Archive is also showing Romanian films as part of the Cinemateca online program, which started this spring. It streams Romanian movies produced until 1997, and recent productions available are Alexandru Tatos' Tenderly Was Anastasia Passing, Gheorghe Vitanidis' Gaudeamus Igitur, about a group of five high-school graduates preparing for their college entrance exams, and Dinu Cocea's The Paratroops, with well-known actor Florin Piersic as a paratroops commander entirely focused on his work. The full program is available here.

Meanwhile, Cluj cinema Arta is streaming this month two films by director Alexandru Tatos – Red Apples, telling the story of a young doctor, played by Mircea Diaconu, sent to practice in a small country town, and Sequences, exploring the topics of truth and lie in art and life while looking at the trials of a film crew. The Arta Acasă program will also offer this month Ágnes Sós' documentary Stream of Love, Bálint Révész's Granny Project, a documentary looking at three men's attempt to understand their past from the perspective of their grandmothers' stories. The program is available here.

TiFF Unlimited, the streaming service launched by Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), is the place to see awarded productions, experimental productions but also classics 24/7. The platform's library, updated regularly, includes numerous films, documentaries, and web series. It recently launched a collection of films for children and teenagers - EducaTIFF online, including films such as La tortue rouge, The Oddsockeaters, or Backstage. A collection of François Truffaut films are available on the platform starting November 16, adding to the films by David Lynch, Xavier Dolan, Abbas Kiarostami, or Claude Chabrol. The service is available based on a monthly or yearly subscription here.

Film distributor Independența Film offers a catalog of films that can be watched online on its Vimeo channel, many of them awarded at top festivals. The offering includes films by Pedro Almodóvar (Julieta, The Skin I Live In, and the recent Pain And Glory), Paolo Sorrentino (Youth, La Grande Bellezza), Asghar Farhadi (Everybody Knows), Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake), Jacques Audiard (Dheepan), Paweł Pawlikowski (Cold War), Hirokazu Koreeda (Shoplifters), and Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), among many others. The films are available for streaming for 48 hours after the purchase of the ticket. 

The platform HappyCinema also offers a diverse selection of titles, including art documentaries, feature films, animations, theater for children, and more. The catalog includes a collection of documentaries of Caravaggio, Goya, Leonardo da Vinci, Canaletto, Van Gogh, and Monet, among many others; animations such as Snowtime!, Ploey - You Never Fly Alone, Coconut, the Little Dragon, Playmobil: The Movie, and Terra Willy: Unexplored Planet (Astro Kid). Romanian films such as Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu, Stuff and Dough, Sieranevada, and Aurora or Ana Lungu's Self-portrait of a Dutiful Daughter are also available. The full catalog can be seen here.

Romanian film review – Terrific documentaries to watch online

(Photo: Narith Thongphasuk | Dreamstime.com)

simona@romania-insider.com