Somewhere in Palilula

Producer Tudor Giurgiu in person!

Possibly the most unusual offering of this year's feature selection, this flamboyant cross between Fellini and Peter Greenaway is the debut film of one of the most famous Romanian stage directors, Silviu Purcărete. Purcărete operates here on a majestic scale, just like in his successful stage plays that made him known worldwide, and claims that reality doesn't matter unless it is told. Far removed from the aesthetics of the New Wave, Somewhere in Palilula tells the story of Serafim, a young doctor assigned on short-term at the hospital in Palilula, a phantom town lost somewhere on the national map, following the death of the previous pediatrician. Serafim gradually adapts to this world of drunkenness, feasting and orgy and ends up, unexpectedly, to belong there. But the truth is that Purcărete's surreal world, similar to Garcia Marquez' Macondo (from One Hundred Years of Solitude) cannot be described; it has to be seen, in all its richness and craziness, to be believed.