10th Anniversary Screening!

Following the screening of Stuff and Dough, join us in the Film Center Amphitheater for New Romanian Cinema: The Tipping Point, a roundtable discussion about the 10 years of the Romanian New Wave, moderated by Romanian Film Festival Artistic Director Mihai Chirilov and Film Society Associate Program Director Scott Foundas. 

The “stuff” in this debut feature by Aurora and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu director Cristi Puiu—one of the first examples of the post-Ceauşescu Romanian filmmaking renaissance—is a satchel full of black-market prescription drugs. The “dough” is 2,000 lei promised to small-town teen Ovidiu (Alexandru Papadopol) if he agrees to hand-deliver the package to Bucharest on behalf of a local gangster (Razvan Vasilescu). He does, inviting his slacker friend Vali (Dragos Bucur) along for the ride, who in turn invites his apathetic girlfriend Bety (Ioana Flora). This unlikely trio then takes to the highway, and the hilariously deadpan road movie that results is a reminder that Puiu, who originally sought to become a painter, has cited a viewing of Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law as a key event in his decision to pursue filmmaking.