Forty days after the death of his parent, Lary, a neurologist in his forties, is about to spend the Saturday at a family gathering to pay respects to the deceased. The large family gets together in the socialist flat of the late patriarch. But the occasion does not go according to expectations. Forced to confront his fears and his past, to rethink the place he holds within the family, Lary finds himself constraint to tell his version of the truth.
“Almost everyone who enters a cinema has found themselves, at some point in their life, seated at a table for a commemoration meal. Only few haven't had this experience. It is not quite a pretext, because a lot of elements would have made the story impossible in this form, maybe they would have been enough just for a long string of jokes, that is, small scale events. This might be hard to accept, but I'd say that I don't think any director, writer or author in this whole world speaks about anything else than death. Death is the linchpin... I could hardly imagine a different drive when I think of the artists I got close to, painters, poets.”
(Cristi Puiu)
Cristi Puiu
Born in 1967 in Bucharest, Puiu studied painting in Geneva, and subsequently also film direction. Sieranevada is the third instalment in the series of love stories entitled Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest, which also includes The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, winner of the Un Certain Regard Award in Cannes, and Aurora.