Sovereign Film Distribution has acquired U.K. and Ireland rights to writer-director Cristi Puiu’s Berlin and Seville winner “Malmkrog” (Manor House).
Puiu won the best director award at the Encounters section of the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, in addition to best screenplay and the Golden Giraldillo Award for best film at the Seville European Film Festival.
An adaptation of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s book “Three Conversations,” “Malmkrog” follows a politician, a countess, a general and his wife as they gather over the Christmas holidays in a manor house to discuss death, war, progress and morality. As the debate becomes more heated, cultural differences become increasingly apparent and the mood grows tense.
The film is billed as a unique mixture of “Downton Abbey” and Dostoyevsky, as it recalls the drawing room masterworks of Max Ophüls, and the stark cerebral work of Ingmar Bergman.
The cast includes Frederic Schulz-Richard, Agathe Bosch,...
Puiu won the best director award at the Encounters section of the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, in addition to best screenplay and the Golden Giraldillo Award for best film at the Seville European Film Festival.
An adaptation of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s book “Three Conversations,” “Malmkrog” follows a politician, a countess, a general and his wife as they gather over the Christmas holidays in a manor house to discuss death, war, progress and morality. As the debate becomes more heated, cultural differences become increasingly apparent and the mood grows tense.
The film is billed as a unique mixture of “Downton Abbey” and Dostoyevsky, as it recalls the drawing room masterworks of Max Ophüls, and the stark cerebral work of Ingmar Bergman.
The cast includes Frederic Schulz-Richard, Agathe Bosch,...
- 1/19/2021
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
In Malmkrog, a group of Russian aristocrats gather in a grand rural estate to wax philosophical during a long and luxurious dinner party. The film offers seemingly the closest thing to a direct screen staging of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s War and Christianity: The Three Conversations. At 200 minutes, it runs just a few breaths short of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but seldom ever leaves the confines of the decadent surrounding–indeed, the majority takes place in just three rooms. The dialogue sounds as if it has been taken verbatim. The camera hardly moves. We recommend caffeine, or perhaps something stronger.
Malmkrog was directed by Cristi Puiu, a filmmaker of the Romanian New Wave who first appeared on most people’s radars with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu in 2005, a film so vital and urgent it seemed to almost singlehandedly propel Romanian cinema to the top of the game for a while.
Malmkrog was directed by Cristi Puiu, a filmmaker of the Romanian New Wave who first appeared on most people’s radars with The Death of Mr. Lazarescu in 2005, a film so vital and urgent it seemed to almost singlehandedly propel Romanian cinema to the top of the game for a while.
- 2/22/2020
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Since Cristi Puiu’s “Malmkrog” means to drown the viewer in a dense and arcane philosophical debate about Good and Evil, the nature of Christ, Europe and the direction of History, let’s add another strand to the discussion: how is cinema put to best use? It’s an especially pertinent question since Puiu’s always stunning use of space and light, so carefully calculated in every shot, so rigidly composed as if he’s used dioramas with dolls to ensure figures and objects will be exactly in the right place, makes even “Malmkrog” a cinematic experience despite a perverse amount of verbiage that demands absolute concentration for nearly three and a half hours. Yet given that he anxiously wants his audience – never more limited than with this film – to follow the calculatedly cruel intellectual jousting between his five main characters,
Perhaps if the voluminous script were first made required reading,...
Perhaps if the voluminous script were first made required reading,...
- 2/21/2020
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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