Happy 2025, dear Insiders, may it be a good year! And let it start with classics, some universal, some underground.

Italian director Federico Fellini is one of the biggest names in the history of the medium. To say he was very influential is an understatement. He has his own adjective (Fellini-esque) while scenes from his films are part of memes. Just think of Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg frolicking in Rome’s Fontana di Trevi (see trailer below to refresh your memory).  

Cinema Eforie is currently screening some of his films. Fellini turned increasingly baroque with time but I have a soft spot for this early pics, less fantastic but more emotionally accessible. I Vitelloni (1953) will forever be one of my favourites. Set in his hometown of Rimini in northern Italy, on the coast, it follows a group of friends in their twenties who refuse to grow up. A melancholic and occasionally riotously funny coming-of-age movie that shows signs of the visual sumptuosity that would make him such a beloved filmmaker. One of the scenes that I remember to this day is the camera movement imitating that of a train carrying away the main character. It is not much of a spoiler if I also include it below.

His most critically revered films are 8½ and La Dolce Vita, and you can catch them both. The first is a meta-fictional take on a director’s artistic (and personal) crisis, and the most famous films about making films. Fellini counted his previous films before making this, hence the title. Some parts of it have aged a bit poorly (i.e. the depiction of women) but it is still, and rightfully so, one of the most influential films. La Dolce Vita has made the term of the Italian “sweet life” famous and gave birth to the term ‘paparazzo’, based on the character of one very persistent photographer called Paparazzo. He pesters movie stars and wealthy, decadent characters of the post-war years. The drama follows them through their affairs and parties. Breathtakingly beautiful and just as decadent visually as its subjects, it is nevertheless a damning satire of moral failing, and unforgettable. The shots of Rome and its villas at night are also ingrained in my memory.  

Union, the other cinematheque in Bucharest, will show another classic on Sunday at 17:00, but boy, what a very different genre and scope. Adrian Țofei’s Be My Cat: A Film for Anne premiered in 2015 and by a great twist of luck I happened to be there. Safe to say I think none of us in the theatre will ever forget it: some for better and some for worse (there were walk-outs, let’s put it this way). The plot is  insane but in a terrific way: the director also acts as the main character in the film, a young filmmaker called Adrian (ha!) so obsessed with American actress Anne Hathaway that he tries to convince her to come to Romania and work with him by sending her a little film as a presentation, in which he casts three young local actresses to showcase his skills. And they all also look like her... What he actually does with and to them is another gruesome story.

Țofei’s horror film falls into the category of “found footage”: what is shown is presented as ‘real’ footage with the ‘protagonists’ in the story that is later found and shown to the audience, like a documentary. In the horror genre, the footage is usually found after characters have died or been killed. The quickest example I can think of is The Blair Witch Project (1999), scandalous when it came out because audiences thought it wasn't staged. Ah, the days before spoilers on the internet. I have never seen anything like Be My Cat here, and to this date it is the only Romanian found-footage film I know of. This alone would make it stand out, but there are many more reasons to admire it. It is an amazing debut, funny, sharp, and absolutely fearless.

It is a very unsettling film in its low-budget aesthetics (and most probably production), most of all by Țofei's committed performance as the demented fan and filmmaker, and a terrific way to blur the lines between fiction and ‘reality’, director and character. He stays away from outright gore but what an impressive trip this is. I admire it very much and was shocked to read that this its very first screening in Bucharest. On the other hand, considering the state of genre and horror film in this country, not terribly surprised. I suppose the internet and private screenings are friendlier to this type of films. I am pretty sure Be My Cat has a cult following by now and a big screen would only make it larger.

The series of screenings at Union, Salon des Refusés – a reference to the famous Parisian art exhibition of 1863 when now-part-of-the-canon paintings rejected from the prestigious main art salon were shown separately – programmes films that fell through the cracks of local festival selection, films shown rarely or not at all in Romania, and followed by filmmakers’ talks. Very much worth your time if you are in Bucharest. Check out more on it here.

By Ioana Moldovan, columnist, ioana.moldovan@romania-insider.com

(Photo: reproduction of a print by street artist Blub referencing a scene from Federico Fellini's Dolce Vita; source: Oversealand | Dreamstime.com)