(Terminus paradis)
Feature/Romania-France/1998/108min/colour/English subtitles
Special Grand Prize Jury Award - Venice Film Festival, 1998


Cast:

Dorina Chiriac, Costel Cascaval, Razvan Vasilescu, Victor Rebengiuc, Doru Ana, Gheorghe Visu

Synopsis:

On the outskirts of Bucharest, on a summer day, the young waitress Norica and Mitu, a pig keeper, meet and begin talking and flirting over vodka. The owner of the food stand where Norica works is ‘Papa' Gili, an unpleasant old man who has decided to marry the young girl in September. The day arrives when Mitu has to leave for military service. The young man begins getting into trouble, carrying out increasingly more self-destructing actions. Such as stealing a tank to demolish ‘Papa' Gili's dive. Mitu's fate is marked. Nevertheless, before his destiny is fulfilled, he manages to see Norica again, to satisfy one last wish. A pitiless film on love and the desperation of those who live in a world governed by the law of the strongest and most violent.

“In my unfortunate country, Evil has moved in. It seems to have come to stay. I have stopped commenting on it and blasting it away. I look at it with cold disgust, with horror…

Can anyone converse or compromise with Evil without his moral fibre being altered?

Mitu Cafanu is the first of my heroes to refuse any compromise with the day-to-day, trivialized aspects of the Apocalypse; he refuses any dialogue with Evil and constructs himself by a radicalness of which the reversal can only be death… When I talk about Mitu, I'm talking about myself. As we get older, our films become more and more autobiographical.” (Lucian Pintilie)

“Potentially a romantic drama [...], but Pintilie had the good sense to set dynamite to it with his permanent sense of disorder and anarchy…”

(Vincent Ostria, ‘Gens bons, jambos', Les Inrockuptibles, 7 October 1998)

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