Blue Moon / Crai nou
Romania 2021
Directed by Alina Grigore, drama, 85 min, eng subtitles, 16+
Written by Alina Grigore
With Ioana Chițu, Mircea Postelnicu, Mircea Silaghi, Vlad Ivanov
A young woman wants to pursue her studies in Bucharest, while her cousins and the rest of her dysfunctional and violent clan would rather have her continue to work for the family business. Chasing folk legends, love of nature and dreams of higher education, only to get caught in a very real but borderline sexual experience, hers is a journey of self-discovery wherein the psychological abuse is so insidious that one can finally not tell who is the victim and who is the abuser.
This insightful psychological drama is set against the superb backdrop of beautiful Bucovina seen through wide camera shots, under a blue moon, with the nearby semantron counting the days, and a soundtrack to echo the sentiments of the characters. Invisible ceilings and relationships, the rural-urban divide and especially the women’s predicaments therein are only some of the points for reflection.