The revival of Romania’s cinematic comedy: crafting laughter on the silver screen

With over 100 Romanian productions vying for nominations at the Gopo Awards, the local equivalent of the Oscars, the country’s cinematic landscape is experiencing a notable resurgence. Business Review delves deeper into this cinematic phenomenon, engaging with film distributors to uncover the driving forces behind this remarkable trend.

Looking at the recent list of nominations for the Gopo Awards, representing the diverse collection of films released in 2023, spanning feature films, documentaries, and shorts showcased across theatres, national and international festivals, and streaming platforms, we wanted to delve into the profile of the Romanian cinemagoer.

According to recent public reports, the Romanian market reached almost EUR 60 million in box-office value, surpassing the landmark 20a18/2019 pre-pandemic years.

More local comedies sought out by the public

According to Cinemagia, the Romanian box office witnessed an unprecedented year in 2023 with four domestic comedies in the Top 10, with Miami Bici 2 by Jesús del Cerro coming ahead of Barbie and Oppenheimer with 2,542,016 admissions and EUR 2.87 million gross revenues. Three of these four domestic titles were produced by Matei Dima through Vidra Productions.

Romina, VTM by Paul-Razvan Macovei came 5th with 360,851 admissions and EUR 1.9 million gross revenue, followed by Nunta pe bani by Cristian Iliusan with 372,016 admissions and EUR 1.83 million gross and Haita de actiune by Vali Dobrogeanu with 322,873 admissions and EUR 1.58 million gross.

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For context, Teambuilding directed by Matei Dima, Cosmin Micutzu Nedelcu, and Alex Cotet, and produced by Vidra Productions, finished 2022 in second place (between Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick) with 1,000,310 admissions and EUR 4.73 million in gross, a record for a Romanian film after 1990 in terms of box office gross.

Film distributors’ perspective

“This increase has largely been driven by a flow of high grossing Romanian comedies and a steady number of US blockbusters. Unfortunately, data on audiences is incomplete, as a major distributor is not reporting audiences, but the box-office increase is largely justified by the price ticket increases and less by audience growth. In fact, we suspect that the total audience in 2023 was about 20% smaller than 2019’s, but it was balanced out by the 20-25% ticket price hikes,” says Stefan Bradea, co-founder of Bad Unicorn.

Bolstering Bradea’s input, Andreea Zidaru, general manager of Forum Film Romania, says: “It is worth adding that Romania was one of the champion countries in Europe, where the return to cinemas happened quite fast after the pandemic; I guess this was also a result of the continuous and immediate efforts by both cinemas and distributors, who were very active in communication after the reopening of cinemas in the summer of 2021.”

“Commercial comedies continue to be the most reliable genre of local films at the Romanian box office. We shall put our own spin on the genre, first by opening our first PG, wide audience comedy, Klaus & Barroso, in January, and later this year by shooting our own parodic take on Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Murder on the Odobesti Express,” adds Cristian Anastasiu, executive director at Bold Film Studio.

But there is more to Romanian cinema than the current comedy trend. “Apart from the success of Romanian comedies, audiences are showing great interest in horror films. In 2023, we capitalised on people’s appetite for this genre with “Talk To Me,” a production made by two YouTubers from Australia, which brought over 65,000 viewers into the cinemas,” notes Antoine Bagnaninchi, owner at Independenta Film.