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Romanian film director Cristi Puiu wins CEI Award 2017 at Trieste Film Festival

This year's CEI Award at the Trieste Film Festival has been bestowed upon the Romanian film director and screenwriter Cristi Puiu. The award (3.000 EUR) - traditionally assigned to an artist who best interprets the contemporary reality of Europe and dialogue among cultures - was presented by CEI Deputy Secretary General, Erik Csernovitz, on 26 January.
 
Considered the father of “New Romanian Cinema,” Cristi Puiu presented his most recent film Sieranevada, which was successfully received at the last Festival de Cannes. It will be released in Italian cinemas in April by Parthénos.
 
As underlined by the jury, Puiu has been awarded for “the sharp wit with which, in all his work, he has depicted today’s Romania, highlighting even the most controversial aspects. The work of Cristi Puiu, one of the most prominent Romanian filmmakers of his generation, can denounce with sharp and biting irony the most controversial and unsettling aspects of today’s Romania”.
 
The CEI, through its Cooperation Fund, is one of the sponsors of the Trieste Film Festival, the Italian leading appointment with Central and Eastern European cinema, offering a unique retrospective of quality filmmaking production from the CEI region.
 
In particular, the CEI is supporting the “Eastweek” project, an international script-writing workshop involving film schools and academies from Central and Eastern Europe, whose main objective is to develop the selected projects from the delicate phase of the initial idea through a series of tutorials, masterclasses and case studies. This year, for the first time, two short films directed by two talented directors (former Eastweek participants) were screened during the Festival.
 
In the framework of the Festival, CEI support is also given to the co-production forum “When East Meets West”, gathering over 350 producers, financiers, decision makers and film professionals from more than 30 countries.
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Cristi Puiu, born in Bucharest in 1967, is a film director and screenwriter who is well-known for  films such as "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)", "Aurora (2010)" or "Stuff and Dough (2001)". He studied arts and painting at the National School of Visual Arts of Geneva from 1992 to 1996, but very soon in his studies, he chose to focus on film-making. During this period, he directed his first short-feature film entitled Before Breakfast, which won an award at the Locarno Film Festival in 1995. With Anca Puiu and Alex Munteanu, in 2004 he founded a cinema production company, naming it Mandragora. "Sieranevada" is his 4th feature-film and the third of his series, “Six Stories from Bucharest Suburbs” initiated with "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu".




 
 
 

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