Best Romanian documentary movies

In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.

1972 was a turning point in Ilie Nastase's career: he won his first US Open, while also reaching both Wimbledon and Davis Cup finals. Moving back and forth in time and featuring amazing archive footage and exclusive interviews with top athletes, the documentary explores Nastase's highs and lows, the controversies that surrounded him and the enduring impact he has had on the world of tennis. Lovable, charming and generous, yet temperamental, arrogant and obscene, Mr. Nice'n'Nasty disrupted the old-fashioned etiquette of the sport in the 70s thus becoming its first rebel rock star.

The three-hour-long documentary covers 25 years in the life of Nicolae Ceaușescu and was made using 1,000 hours of original footage from the National Archives of Romania.

“Last autumn, a good childhood friend of mine, Florin, told me that his brother, Laurentiu, invented a new sport by changing the rules of football. One month later I went to Vaslui, my hometown, with a small film crew in order to learn more about this new sport...”

Two journalists born in the mid '80s decide to take a look back at how their country changed in the last 30 years since the fall of communism. The end product is a documentary containing footage of political events and historical milestones significant to Romania accompanied by a narrator's voice walking the viewer through the events, and also interviews with Romanian politicians and other influential public figures sharing their thoughts and their different views on those events.

Romania is on the last place in Europe in terms of highway kilometers, but on the first place in the number of deaths in road accidents. Entrepreneur Stefan Mandachi builds 1 meter of highway on his private property.

Poet, musician, intellectual, and committed communist Nina Cassian wrestled for decades with the central contradiction of her life: how to reconcile her artistic ideals with the strict censorship imposed by Romania’s Communist Party — a tension that put her at odds with the totalitarian Ceaușescu regime and eventually led to her exile. Interweaving archival footage with firsthand interviews, this thought-provoking documentary illuminates the complex relationships between art, politics, and personal truths.

The film confronts two different views of the execution of General Ion Antonescu, Romania's leader during the Second World War.

A semi-fictional correspondence between two women: one goes to Iran in 1979 to topple the Shah; the other experiences the onerous years of Ceaușescu’s Romania. Their biographies run in parallel via images of everyday life and videograms of revolution.

Documentary about the golden generation of Romanian football and its achievements, especially at the 1994 world cup.

1 village, 1.000 tractors, 100.000 tons of cabbages & potatoes each year - which are hardly sold and eventually destroyed. Is there any way out?

The film tells the story of a Euro 2024 qualification and a team in which no one believed anymore. Or almost nobody. A behind-the-scenes story of the Euro 2024 qualification campaign for Romania's national football team.

Recorded over 10 years, România Sălbatică shows the colorful beauty of Romanian nature accompanied with wildlife.

A found-footage documentary assembled exclusively out of post-socialist Romanian advertisements, this brings together these documents of Romania’s long transition period, they are made to speak about life, love and death, about the body and human frailty, about nature and the supernatural, about recent history, and, of course, about socialism and capitalism.

An old aviator fights to stay in the air. Whether he wins or not, his participation will mark a new record for aviation and will allow one more armistice in his battle with time.

Traditional Roma-communities of Romania are culturally rich communities, ruled with complicated rituals and customs. Marriage is maybe the most set in stone such custom, with everything about it being under very strict community control. What keeps everyone alert is Roma marriage’s highest stake: fertility and conceiving boys.

A glimpse at the daily lives of patients in a Romanian psychiatric hospital.

A funeral procession pushes across the florid stillness of a deserted Romanian village.

After being betrayed by the one he forged into a boxing World Champion, Dobre, a veteran boxing coach, devotes himself to train his new pupil Caisă.

Few know what happened, in fact, on August 23, 1944, and who were the main actors of change. Words like "coup", "war" and "communists" are used often in the same sentence, without knowing anything about the courage that a king nor 23 had when it was across Hitler's plan.

The mysterious appearance of massive golden bracelets in int'l antiquarian circles uncovers an inside story of the looting of a 2000 yr-old Transylvanian golden-hoard. Police investigations...

Film director, Andrei, and his girlfriend, Paula, face the news of becoming parents. While the future mother is struggling with no worthy role models, the soon-to-be father must reconcile with the figure of his own father, now a monk on Mount Athos.

The fascinating portrait of Ion Bârlàdeanu. The touching and inspiring story of a man who literally lived in the gutter for 20 years - and in the meantime managed to create paintings and collages which are now exhibited alongside works by Andy Warhol or Marcel Duchamp.

At the end of a long-term relationship, a half-blind director, born in 1986, whose mother blames his illness on the Chernobyl nuclear accident, leaves his life in Romania behind and embarks on a journey out of the desire to find and other people affected by the same disaster. He falls in love with a young woman from Ukraine and his life changes completely.

Shot over the course of ten years, the story revolves around 16-year-old Alice who becomes a mother to Aristo, a child conceived out of her deep affection for Dorian, despite their remarkable 35-year age difference. However, their trajectories quickly separate, compelling Alice to make the heart-wrenching choice of parting ways with both Dorian and Aristo.

The Romanian penitentiary system allows, from 2006, the marriage of people sentenced to serve time in prison. Most of the inmates cultivate the pre-existing relationships with the concubines or partners who live outside the prison walls. Though, there is a special category, of those who find a life partner during their time in prison. VISITING ROOM follows the stories of some prisoners found in different penitentiaries across the country, who have found their life partner during their sentence time. The one is either a person from outside, or as them, a person who is serving time in prison. Our intention was to talk to the people found in the special situation of being deprived of freedom, to whom love becomes a substitute for freedom and represents maybe their only hope for a better future.

Kalo, a 24-year-old man roams Italy selling fake iPhones and Samsung phones on street corners to other neighborhood boys, generally immigrants. Amalia, a young mother fights for the life of her newborn daughter Riana, in a hospital in Bucharest. She hopes that her daughter will be sent as soon as possible to Milan, where Riana can have heart surgery to survive. In Everything for Riana we find out how everything will end for the young family.

The film shows the catastrophic floods in Romania in 1970.

Professor Ioan-Matei Agapi, an 80-year-old photographer and cameraman from Iași, Romania, owns a unique collection of 16mm films and photographs documenting almost fifty years of the city’s history. His daughter, also a filmmaker, has decided to make a film about her father's archives. In the unconventional surroundings of his old apartment, he reminisces about the past until one day, Ioan is informed that he must leave or be evicted from the apartment where he has spent the past 40 years. Ioan’s years of work suddenly transform into a huge burden, and the film unexpectedly changes into drama in which conflicts with city officials reveal old and hidden conflicts within the family.

A streetlamp marking the limit of a town in Aragon’s Eastern Strip lights up at nightfall. Angelica, a woman of Romanian origin living in the town, witnesses the birth of a foal at the stables where she works. The little creature’s struggle to free itself from the maternal placenta, its condition of ghostly and borderline existence, pierce her to the extent that she will be unable to shake off the image.

Queen Maria of Romania, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, ruled the country during World War I and 1918, achieving international recognition. Despite personal struggles, she was banished from court by Carol's son.

A "behind-the-scenes" insight of the Romanian wedding industry, with cameramen, photographers and singers from all around the country in the spotlight. Their life stories, their editing styles, their hands-on-approach know-how and, of course, their performances at weddings, mix up in a shortcut-style film. George Stirbat, the 30-something one-man-show singer from the small town of Onesti returned home after a mini-Broadway career and Petru Manici, the coal mine electrician from the mining town of Petrosani, are just two of the most interesting characters the film follows in their quest to achieve perfection for the bride's and groom's memories. Something to remember.

Andreea Raducan, a successful 32-year-old woman and one of Romania’s greatest gymnasts, sacrificed her childhood to become an Olympic champion. She finally won the all-round Olympic gold medal in Sydney in 2000, but was stripped of it three days later after testing positive for a doping substance contained in a flu tablet her doctor had administered to her minutes before she entered the competition. Fifteen years later, Andreea is fighting the toughest fight against the people who deceived her, as she tries to recover her medal and, along with it, her dignity.

Mihai Moldoveanu, a former Romanian army officer, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for a crime he claims he did not commit. Following a long series of attempts to prove his innocence, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Moldoveanu's favor in June 2012. The documentary follows him after his provisional release and focuses on the referral of the case and the consequences of the new sentence, giving the viewer the role of a juror in a complicated and controversial lawsuit.

A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.

Three Roma children from a small Transylvanian town participate in a project to desegregate the local school, struggling against indifference, tradition and bigotry with humor, optimism and sass.

Poet, novelist and translator, 92-year-old Nora Iuga is a unique character on the contemporary literature scene. Discover the Romanian writer banned by communists for "morbid eroticism" and learn her secret of always staying young.

32 year old female boxer Steluta Duta tries to buy her own home by winning boxing match after boxing match only to find her life is a continuous loop. As she trains for her European Boxing Cup, Stela revisits the past dramas of being an abandoned, institutionalized child.

Reporter Matt Shea uncovers the truth behind notorious influencer Andrew Tate and his secretive, all-male society, the War Room. Through interviews with alleged victims, internal whistleblowers and Tate himself, this four-year-long investigation uncovers that Tate’s cult-like organisation has been grooming scores of women into online sex work through seduction, manipulation and what it sees as 'psychological conditioning.' The film also confronts the mysterious mastermind behind the organisation, who helped craft Tate into a global figurehead while remaining in the shadows - until now.

An animated feature-length documentary telling the story of the life of Crulic, a 33 year-old Romanian accused of having stolen a wallet from an important Polish judge. Crulic was brought to the Krakow Detention Center Custody prison. He decided to start a hunger strike from the day he was arrested, demanding a meeting with somebody from the Romanian Consulate.

The last days of the first Romanian king, Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and the tough decisions he had to make in the summer of 1914 in order to please both Romanian Parliament and his relatives from the German Empire.

Young men from all over the world have been meeting at the Blue Boy Bar in Berlin for forty years.

In 1959, in Romania, six former members of the nomenklatura and the secret police organize a hold up of the National Bank. After their arrest, the state forces them to play themselves in a film which reconstitutes the crime and the investigation. At the end of their trial, filmed live, they are sentenced to death and executed. A month later, the film Reconstitution was released and became a sensation throughout the country.

A time capsule of New York City between August 13-15, 1965, framed by the Beatles’ arrival in the city and their first concert at Shea Stadium. The film consists exclusively of archive material from the period (ABC, CBS, NBC), 8mm home movies and images of the concert, which was recorded with fourteen 35mm cameras. Four teenagers are sent on a trip through time and inserted in the archive material by means of animation.

You say my poems are poetry? They're not. Yet if you understand they're not, - Then you see the poetry of them! Radu Jude’s desktop film, in which director considers Andy Warhol’s celebrity immortality with live footage of the artist’s grave in Pittsburgh.

Once a major wealthy town, Sulina is a victim of post-communist decline and disarray. Ten years after the fall of Ceausescu inhabitants still live in poverty. Despite their despair, there is room for dreams and humor. The Romanian town Sulina lies right in the no-man's-land of the Danube-delta, cut off from the rest of the world. Ten years after the fall of the communist regime the people here are worse off than ever. Sulina used to be a wealthy trade town. But with the decline of communism the economic connections petered out. The film portrays four of the region's inhabitants from three generations who just manage to get by.

An elderly couple enjoy life but grieve over the finiteness of it all. This love story tells itself in images, and the filmmaker, also the couple's grandson, keeps himself invisible.

This is a film about what the car traffic turns us into. For 5 months the director in the passenger seat accompanies five ordinary people (A half paralyzed man who not only drives a car, but he also helps other people to avail themselves of cars; Peruvian woman, who was been raised in a city with an equally crazed traffic; a father who has recently lost his daughter in a traffic accident; a policeman who was beaten up by the militia before December 1989) on their every day journeys around the capital.

What does a retired police officer, a dog trainer, the founder of a political party and anti-government protesters have in common? They've all met on the streets of Bucharest, 23 years after the Romanian Revolution, determined to reclaim the public space. Vlad Petri is following their stories for one year, from the first days of the anti-government protests to the final days of the Referendum against the President. The film raises questions about the role of the public space, the power of the individual and the understanding of democracy in a society caught between a communist past and an uncertain future.

The film tells the story of one of the oldest circus families in Romania, descendants of the Globus Circus founder, Toma Zdebschi. Mina and Carol have been married for 55 years. They were both circus artists. Mina is 75 and Carol is 84.

For three days in June 1990, the famed Paris attic of Emil Cioran (1911-1995) was transformed into a film studio under the supervision of filmmaker Sorin Ilieşiu, creating an engrossing portrait of the philosopher and essayist.

In Petrila, a Romanian mining town, an ex-miner uses art and absurdism in a struggle to keep history alive.

A deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television images in real time. A Bucharest derby between the country’s leading teams, Dinamo and Steaua, taking place in heavy snow, one year before the revolution that toppled Ceaușescu.

PhoeniXXX is the story of two women, who had to reinvent and recalibrate themselves for others in order to escape poverty and reach their goals. In the end, both seem to get what they want, but the erotic chat industry took its toll on of them.

Herculane Baths, one of the oldest resorts in Europe, the place where, a few centuries ago, kings and queens were diving in the healing waters, became a maze where people get lost while looking for something better. Relu, Mitica and Gelu, three masseurs, are tour guides through the maze of an Eastern Europe garden of Eden.

After 30 years of marriage, my parents told me they were separating. I fell in love and started my own family during this painful process. The film explores the different shapes that love can take between parents and children and children who become parents.

Shukar Collective play bear tamer music using spoons, wooden barrels or daraboukas, whilst a couple of DJs add layer after layer of urban sound over this traditional music. It is this kind of eclectic environment that best describes what the documentary deals with: culture contact.

In 1982, the newly elected President of France, François Mitterrand, clashes with the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu in a spy story worthy of a detective novel, a conflict during the Cold War and a hidden struggle in which the secret services of both countries, the French DST and the Romanian Securitate, were involved. In 1982, Ceaucescu orders one of his agents to assassinate two Romanian dissidents living in Paris, the writers Virgil Tanase and Paul Goma, French citizens. But instead of carrying out this order, the Securitate agent Matei Haiducu, alias Matthieu Forestier, went directly to report him to the DST.

Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women, was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children. All forms of contraception were totally banned. The New Romanian Man was born. By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Romanian society was rapidly changing. By using very interesting archival footage and excerpts from old fiction films and by interviewing famous personalities from that time – gynecologists or mothers who were part of the new society - the director revives this period of tremendous oppression of personal freedom. Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters, and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them.

The director and her father take a camera in hand and film each other during interviews in which they discuss schizophrenia, their own pasts, and their personal conceptions of happiness. The film is a personal statement of two people affected by or marked by a mental disorder - a father forced to live with it and a daughter who had to grow up with a sick and often absent father. During filming, they try to find understanding for each other while revealing their inner traumas. One of the secondary topics is what it is like to undergo treatment for a mental disorder in Romania, as the father expresses frustration with the way he and his condition are viewed by the local healthcare system.

Siamese cat eating peas

The capital city of Romania is documented from the turn of 20th century to the more modern times under post WWII Communism.

The film is submerging in the world of YouTube and internet amateur-made-films posting through the eyes of Bahoi, one of Romania's most viewed filmmakers. The first part of the movie deeply analysis his films by going to his hometown village in Romania, Peninsula, and meeting Bahoi's most famous characters. Also through Bahoi's own words we are trying to find out why is he filming so much brilliant material, why is he posting it on the internet and how he took this passion with him to the West. In the second part we are traveling along with Bahoi throughout Europe to discover more talented people and make some sense of this huge boom in filmmaking.

A film composed entirely of archival photographs and documents related to the Iași Pogrom of June 1941. The first part of the film consists of photographs of the victims, accompanied by statements and testimonies about their fate. The second part, shorter, is a montage of photos of the pogrom itself.

A documentary about the Jewish people in Romania and their several migrations towards Israel, across history and changing political frames - everything presented in a self-proclaimed dadaist style.

A fantastic short documentary that explores an event that is staged in a cave in one of the oldest forests in Romania. The premise of the film - that people are bored and need something to do or perform is beside the point - there are people in Romania who will move an entire orchestra into a cave in the forest and thousands of people will arrive to watch a classical performance there. Breathtaking and fun at the same time.