Lucian Pintilie

Lucian Pintilie (1933-2018) was a Romanian director of film, theatre, and opera and one of his nation’s most renowned post-war artists. Born in Bessarabia in modern-day Ukraine, he studied theatre in Bucharest before becoming resident director of the city’s Bulanda Theatre in 1960. His stagings of classics by Shaw, Gogol, and Chekhov cemented his reputation, but his work in film – especially in his directorial outings Sundays at Six (1965) and Reconstruction (1968) saw him fall foul of the state censors. From 1973 to 1982, he mostly worked in theatres in France and the United States. Returning to Romania in the early 1980s, he directed another feature film, Carnival Scenes, after which he was forced to leave the country for good until the fall of the communist regime. On his return, he was able to direct a string of acclaimed films, including The Oak (1992), An Unforgettable Summer (1994), Next Stop Paradise (1998), and The Afternoon of a Torturer (2001). Pintilie’s absurdist humour and interest in the dark aspects of Romania’s history proved influential on the so-called New Wave that revitalised the country’s cinema in the 21st century.