The weeks leading up to Christmas are busy, and also busy with all sorts of seasonal pics, specials, and events. Here are a few movies showing now in theatres, of all genres, for a nostalgic, funny, dramatic, eye-opening countdown to the holidays (scroll below for all trailers).

Cătălin Saizescu’s Visul/ The Dream is currently in cinemas in Bucharest, a comedy perfect for a holiday season but just as formulaic: a hapless actor finds himself working with inmates in a high-security prison for putting on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The jokes you might imagine are all here, and the tone is light and silly throughout. The well-intentioned comedy will put a smile on your face here and there but also make you forget it as soon as you leave the cinema.

Între revoluții/ Between Revolutions is still playing in Cluj, at cinema Arta. If you’ve missed it, this is your chance to catch one of the year’s loveliest films, a tender, moving blend of documentary and fiction from archive material and inspired by real documents. Vlad Petri’s pic follows the friendship of two women, one Romanian, and one Iranian, lived through letters in the period spanning the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Romanian one in 1989, and the years following.

In Brașov, KineDok, bringing recent documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe to unconventional spaces, will have its final screening on 12 December, in the presence of the film team, and what a fun one this is. Adina Popescu and Iulian Manuel Ghervas’ Vulturii din Țaga/ Eagles from Țaga was one of the most popular documentaries I saw at this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival, a true crowd-pleaser about a less-than-successful soccer team (led by a formidably upbeat manager) in the eponymous Transylvanian village.

The city seems to be in an overall feel-good mood: cinema Astra is showing all-time classics every week until 7 January. This is all stuff you would catch on your TV these days but why not jump to the chance of seeing the ultimate holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life or Gone with the Wind, best admired in its Technicolor grandeur, on a big screen?

I cannot leave out the most holiday-ish film currently in theatres. Not a Romanian production but one of the most touching releases of the year, Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves has everything: a tender love story, karaoke, the cutest dog in films since, well Kaurismäki previous movies, the most precise frames and vibrant use of colours, and Helsinki dive bars. One could say the Finnish director has been making the same film for decades now, but he is truly unique, with his dry-as-bread humour, laconic dialogue, and big love for his characters. Such a joy.

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

Picture info & credit: still from Fallen Leaves, Bufo Facebook Page (Sputnik, Oy Bufo Ab, Pandora Film // MUBI, Bad Unicorn)