12:08 East of Bucharest
12:08 East of Bucharest
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Synopsis

The first feature from Corneliu Porumboiu, 12:08 East of Bucharest won him the Camera d'Or award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. The film is set sixteen years after the fall of Ceausescu''s communist regime and just days before Christmas. Three men--a local TV host, a drunken history teacher, and a retiree playing Santa--are on the air to discuss whether the revolution actually came to their small town. What results is a bleak, baffling, and hilarious ensemble comedy. "East of Bucharest has a sly modesty reminiscent of the long-ago Czech new wave, exhibiting a sense of film form that evokes the best of the rueful Czech comedies" (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). In Romanian with English and Spanish subtitles. Corneliu Porumboiu---Romania---2006---89 mins.

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Reviews of '12:08 East of Bucharest'

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Most Recent Reviews
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  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
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   | Lewis#4

The film's title refers to the exact moment on December 22, 1989 when Romanian dictator Nicolae Caeusescu and his wife fled the presidential palace in Bucharest. (They were executed on Christmas day.) In a provincial city, a self-important television pundit aspires to mark the sixteenth anniversary of this event on his talk-and-call-in program. Unfortunately, the only guests he can line up (such is the general indifference to the country’s recent history) are an alcoholic history teacher and a geriatric Santa Claus impersonator. The guests are asked where they were at that defining moment, a question that leads to a Rashomonian chorus of conflicting telephone calls. The larger question becomes: did the Revolution even take place in this (unnamed) city? Corneliu Porumboiu’s film is a low-keyed, slyly observed comedy of the Eastern European type. The camera work in the first half of the film is appropriately straightforward and unobtrusive. In the style of early Jim Jarmusch, each scene is a single medium shot, recorded by a static camera (the only exceptions being a couple of automobile-mounted shots). The last half is presented as the program itself, seen through the bored eye of the television studio camera. (The slack-jawed cameraman is a hoot.) This 2006 film, the feature debut of director Porumboiu, took the Caméra d’Or at Cannes. His impressive second film, “Police, Adjective,” establishes him as someone to watch.

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  • Currently 3/5 Stars.
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   | Daniel#7

Quite funny, very Eastern European in its ironic tone. Depicts the ugly dreariness of smaller communities in these post-Communist states.

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  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
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   | Ila#1

Quirky Eastern European humor with alot of sight gags. Alot of laugh out loud scenes.

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   | Vasile#1

A classic comedy, capturing very well the mindset of the Romanian small town community (and I know this because I am a Romanian from a small town).

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