Abstract

At the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Romania could boast the third largest number of films shown, after only the US and France. Out of its six entries, Bacalaureat (Graduation, 2016, Romania/France/Belgium) won its director Cristian Mungiu the Best Director Award, while Câini (Dogs, 2016, Romania/France/Bulgaria/Qatar) by Bogdan Mirică won the FIPRESCI Award (Zeitchik 2016). The 2016 Cannes story is only the latest in a series of successes for Romanian films over the past decade since Cătălin Mitulescu won the Palme d’Or for his short film Traffic (Romania) in 2004. In the subsequent four years—between 2005 and 2009—the five main prizes at the Cannes Film Festival went to Romanian films, solidifying their claim to be the next European movement—The Romanian New Wave (hereafter: RNW) as critics have termed it—after von Trier and Vinterberg’s Dogme 95.