The CEI Award – Central European Initiative, which annually highlights an artist with the ability to portray the contemporary reality of Europe and dialogue between cultures, has been presented to Cristi Puiu, for “the sharp wit with which, in all his work, he has depicted today’s Romania, highlighting even the most controversial aspects.” Considered the father of “New Romanian Cinema,” Cristi Puiu, who has already won an award at Trieste Film Festival in 2006 for The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, will present at the Festival his most recent film Sieranevada, which was successfully received at the last Festival de Cannes and will be released in Italian cinemas in April, distributed by Parthénos. A choral fresco and a river draws the viewer inside a Bucharest apartment where – three days after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and forty days after his father’s death – Lary, a neurologist at the height of his career, spends Sundays with his whole family, gathered to commemorate the deceased. Not everything, however, goes as expected: between arguments, disputes, secrets, and conspiracies, Lary will be forced to face his fears, to reconsider his own place within the family, and to tell his truth. A film that, as always in Puiu’s work, closely observes domestic intimacy- and its conflicts- in order to talk about an entire country, if not the entire continent.
