Cinema Releases - Aurora
Aurora is the story of the fall of an ordinary man – an imperfect fall without glory. The film follows Viorel for two days as he wanders Bucharest. A recently divorced father of two young daughters, Viorel is an engineer. At work, he has an altercation with one of his co-workers who owes him money and drops in on another employee who hands over two hand-made firing pins, prepared in secret, for a hunting rifle. Viorel wanders around Bucharest. Wherever he is, he feels the same strange nervousness, the same muffled anxiety and the same urge to end the instability that rules his life. He buys a rifle and ammunition, then goes back home to test his weapon...
Cristi Puiu was born in Bucharest in 1967. As a student in the Painting Department of the École Supérieure d’Arts Visuels in Geneva, he shot several short films and documentaries in the 1990’s. After he returned to Romania, he continued to paint and co-wrote screenplays with Razvan Radulescu and Lucian Pintilie. In 2001, he made his first feature film, Stuff and Dough, a road movie filmed with a hand-held camera in a near documentary style. The film was selected at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and received several awards in international film festivals, notably the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. After being awarded the Golden Bear for best short film in Berlin in 2004 for Cigarettes and Coffee, Cristi Puiu shot The Death of Mr Lazarescu, which won the Un Certain Regard Prize in Cannes in 2005, as well as many other awards. Aurora is the second instalment of the Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest series and is Cristi Puiu’s third feature film.
2001 Stuff and Dough
2004 Cigarettes and Coffee ( short)
2005 The Death of Mr Lazarescu
2010 Aurora
CREW
Written and directed by Cristi Puiu
Producers Anca Puiu, Bobby Paunescu
Co-Producers Philippe Bober, Dan Wechsler
Director of Photography Viorel Sergovici
Sound André Rigaut
Editor Ioachim Stroe
Production Manager Gilda Conon
A CoProduction of Mandragora , Societé Parisienne de Production, Bord Cadre Films, Essential Filmproduktion
In collaboration with ARTE France Cinéma, ZDF/ARTE, Societatea Romana de Televiziune, TSR/SSR,HBO Romania
with the support of Centrul National al Cinematografiei Romania, Eurimages, SC Serv Invest SRL,
OFC Section Cinéma, Centre National de la Cinématographie
CAST
Viorel Cristi Puiu
Gina Clara Voda
Pusa Valeria Seciu
Miora Luminita Gheorghiu
Mrs Livinski Catrinel Dumitrescu
Mr Livinski Gelu Colceag
Stoian Valentin Popescu
Romania/France/Switzerland/Germany 2010 181 minutes
"Chilly and majestic work …In the end, it asks if a system of law could ever be sophisticated enough to acknowledge the dark complexities of the human mind."
"A technical and emotional tour de force. A(nother) great addition to the so-called Romanian New Wave."
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
“A compelling near-MASTERPIECE”
SIGHT & SOUND
★★★★
“THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU…was the first of the director’s six stories from the outskirts of Bucharest and Aurora is the second. It’s chilly mood and tact psychological explorations again mark out THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU director as a key filmmaker of the Romanian new wave. The film is brilliantly shot and fastidious. It’s worth it.”
Derek Malcolm, THE EVENING STANDARD
★★★★
“In many ways a work of genius…”
“Bracing stuff”
Kate Muir, THE TIMES
“A Romanian thriller from Cristi Puiu, director of the powerful, THE DEATH OF LAZARESCU, is both horribly real and abstract as it follows an engineer (played by the director) as he prepares to commit murder…it’s a film with a brutal, post-Ceausescu dampness in it… “
Antonia Quirke, THE FINANCIAL TIMES
“Aurora is a stunning accomplishment.”
New Empress Magazine
★★★★
“This edgy drama”
David Parkinson, EMPIRE
“A drama of significant heft and impact”
Daniel Green, Cine-vue
“A bold and accomplished film”
Joey Godman, The Upcoming
“Thoughtful and imposing”
Trevor Johnson, TIME OUT
"A formidable, enigmatic piece of work…(it) has a dark, lowering presence on the screen”
Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN
“Absorbing in its methodical way…”
Antony Quinn, THE INDEPENDENT
"As disturbing as it is believable...undeniabley the product of a master helmer...Puiu's performance is pitch perfect"
Jay Weissberg, VARIETY
"Puiu creates a subtle slow-burning tension that's as gripping as any thriller...masterly"
Edward Lawrenson, LFF
‘This follow-up to The Death of Mr Lazarescu is one of the most uncompromisingly rigorous films of the year, an often defiantly taciturn, even uneventful study of a day and a half in the life of a man who also happens to take the lives of others.’
Geoff Andrew, Sight and Sound
‘This quotidian portrait of a man contemplating violence builds in your mind even after you’ve devoted three hours to watching it. Cinema’s own Crime and Punishment.’
Nick James, Sight and Sound
★★★★
‘With his bold third feature, he proves that he is one of the most distinctive artists working in cinema anywhere today... undoubtedly the work of an audacious, intelligent writer-director who’s both ready and very able to deal with areas of human experience of which many other filmmakers seem barely to be aware. It was the inescapable fact of mortality in Mr Lazarescu; here it is the pain and confusion of just being alive. And Puiu’s special approach to the realist aesthetic ensures that Aurora rings unusually true. SUPERB STUFF.
Geoff Andrew, Time Out
‘An epic on the banality of evil’
Jacques Mandelbaum, Le Monde
'A mystery in which the largest questions are existential rather than procedural, Aurora involves a solitary man, played by Mr. Puiu himself with an increasingly disquieting stare, who about an hour into the film buys a gun and then, a half-hour later, fires it. It’s uncertain what haunts the man, whose name, Viorel, like so many other significant details, emerges late or not at all. Instead of pumping up the narrative with familiar thriller (and musical) beats, Mr. Puiu builds tension through absence, creating palpable unease through lingering silences, a dearth of heightened drama — before the gun goes off, the exchanges are fairly banal — and an emptied-out apartment. Only later do you grasp that this man has been hollowed out too'.
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Read a review of Aurora by Tom Hall on Indiwire after its screening at the New York Film Festival.
Download Poster
Downlaod 300 dpi photos Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4
Watch a clip from Cristi Puiu's masterclass in Belfast in January 2011
Read an interview with Cristi Puiu discussing Aurora in Film Quarterly