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Other Spaces

A showcase of contemporary films screened in “site-specific” venues, along with additional sections based on a concept tailored for the specific edition.

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Cinematik Classics

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Artistic Director's Selection

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Respect: Radu Jude

Radu Jude is one the most significant and prolific contemporary European auteurs. A filmmaker with an uncompromising, unique voice. He brings raw, unrestrained energy to his films, peppers them with pitch black humour. His oeuvre ranges from political to philosophical, probing deep into Romania’s dark past, and at the same time reflecting its deeply flawed present. Fusing the highbrow with the low, he always applies an evenly critical, unflinching eye to both. A truly revolutionary artist.

Radu Jude was assistant director on Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr Lazarescu (2005), the film marking the very beginning of the New Romanian Cinema, a phenomenon which put Romanian cinema on a global map. He directed several short films before moving on to feature films with his feature length debut The Happiest Girl in the World (2009) followed by Everybody in Our Family (2012). He has made documentaries and fiction films including Aferim! (2015), Scarred Hearts (2016), I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) and Uppercase Print (2020). Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) the Jury Prize at Locarno Film Festival.

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Romania Magnified

Contemporary Romanian cinema is thriving. Popular comedies reflect a younger demographic of cultural consumption are breaking box-office records, while arthouse cinema retains its yearly visibility on the international film-festival circuits. In this regard, the retrospective offers a varied sample of the broad cinematic and thematic palette of Romanian cinema—from art-house experimentation in both narrative and documentary forms, to more audience-minded works that tap into established genres (comedy, film noir, coming-of-age, etc.).
Established auteur Radu Muntean expands his incisive psychological filmmaking within the genre tonalities of suspense in Intregalde, an artistic approach echoed by newcomer Mihai Mincan in his debut To the North, a theological thriller afloat in international waters. The variety of genre filmmaking is broadly exemplified by the two corrupt anti-hero state-employees of Bogdan Mirica’s urban noir Boss (a much-anticipated follow-up to his neo-western Dogs) and Paul Negoescu’s rural tragicomedy and festival-hit Men of Deeds, while Ana-Maria Comanescu’s debut Horia offers an opposing look at the sweet-natured innocence of its young protagonists’ coming-of-age road-trip.
A further outlier of genre cinema, Mammalia sees Sebastian Mihailescu explore patriarchy within a dystopic-goth art-house framework, while toxic masculinity and LGBTQIA+ identity is the focus of theater-director Eugen Jebeleanu’s Poppy Field, which dramatizes an infamous real-life case of homophobia and police-brutality that took place in Bucharest. Anca Damian’s The Island more than makes up for the sparse output of animated films in Romanian cinema, with the auteur delivering one of the most vibrant reimaginings of Romanian surrealist Gellu Naum’s titular work (itself inspired by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe), exploring topical themes of migration, consumerism and climate crisis under the musical direction of Alexander Balanescu and Ada Milea.
The documentaries included in the retrospective reflect a growing interest in the form’s engagement with archives (and by extension, a therapeutic process of (self)analysis)—an approach that is equally interested in personal stories (as in the case of director Eugen Buica’s moving family portrait of Mrs. Buica) and national histories (the epistolary essay Between Revolutions, co-written by director Vlad Petri and renowned writer Lavinia Braniste).

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Cult & Beyond: On Body and Transformations

Human body is a perfectly tuned biological machine, controlled by a supercomputer— the human mind. It has its functions preset, encoded in genes, and the necessary software installed. Gradually, hardware is added as we grow and evolve, and individual programs are activated one by one. Our body and mind usually function without any significant problems. Now and then we fine-tune or repair them by visiting a doctor. What happens when an aggressive, invading element, coming from outside or even from within, takes over? Addictions, violence, virus and pregnancy or adolescence, sadness and anxiety. Initially, the body naturally tries to absorb them in an attempt to cope. However, under these influences, transformations naturally occur. A transformation of the body transforms the mind, and vice versa. Welcome to the world of body and its transformations!

Rastislav Steranka

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Meeting Point Europe

Cinematik comes with a unique and original concept for its competitive section. In the main competition, entitled Meeting Point Europe, we screen a collection of the best European films made since last years Cinematik.

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Cinematik.doc

Cinematik.doc is a competition of Slovak documentary feature films that premiered during the period of one year before the festival. The Literary Fund Cinematik.doc Award is awarded at the proposal of the international jury of the IFF Cinematik for Best Director of a Slovak documentary film.

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In the House

Current Slovak cinema premieres, television novelties, but also a film review of students Works from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. The Slovak cinematography is extremely lively and Cinematik selects the most interesting documentary and fiction titles.

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Paths of Glory

After the popular annual Kinema Choice, we present a new richer section Paths of Glory, whose title is inspired by a famous Kubrick’s piece from 1957.

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Cinematik Jr.

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