Close
By Rebecca McKeown
For eleven years the Romanian Film Festival in London has been introducing British audiences to the delights of Romanian cinema.
Seats to the screenings consistently sell out, with thousands of people going home every year with a taste of Romania and its culture.
As a Romaniaphile, I was drawn to the festival as a chance to see some of the latest cinema coming out of the country. Romanian film festivals are not “a dime a dozen” in my own country, New Zealand, so I was eager to attend during my time in London.
Rather ironically then, it was a Moldovan film I found myself sitting down to at the 11th RFF in Leicester Square.
“The Unsaved” turned out to be a brilliantly dark comedy following the day to day life of Viorel, a small-scale drug dealer in a small Moldovan town.
Listening to the Moldovan accents during the film, I found it tricky to hear any stark differences to Romanian. I was interested, therefore, to hear the Romanian lead actress explain (at a Q&A following the feature) how difficult she had found the Moldovan accent was to mimic.
I look forward to the day when my own Romanian language skills are so advanced that I can pick out the subtleties of dialect differences!
If you want to test your own Moldovan/Romanian language skills on the (excellent) film, you can preview it in the clip below.
More information on the Romanian Film Festival in London