It’s no coincidence that Y [+leggi anche:
intervista: Maria Popistașu, Alexandru…
scheda film] sticks to the good old tradition of the Romanian New Wave’s chattiness, as the cinematic paths of both Maria Popistașu and Alexandru Baciu are closely tied to the movement – Baciu was a co-screenwriter of emblematic works such as The Paper Will Be Blue and Tuesday, After Christmas [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Radu Muntean
scheda film], and Popistașu was an actress in the latter as well as in one of the last strong manifestations of the style, Întregalde [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Radu Muntean
scheda film]. Now, the two co-direct an existential family drama, rooted in the detailed, dialogue-heavy approach of tandem Cristi Puiu-Răzvan Rădulescu, or Radu Jude’s and Călin Peter Netzer’s moral questionings while refusing to provide any final answers. Thus, the duo continues to tread the tried-and-tested path of debate-worthy Romanian cinema – with ambivalent positions, no black-and-white conclusions, no right or wrong characters and, in the particular case of Y, implying shared responsibility. The film has just celebrated its world premiere in the International Competition of the Warsaw Film Festival, together with 14 other titles, and has turned out to be one of the year’s Romanian highlights.

After an abrupt opening featuring a found-footage interview with a Romani orphan, our gaze is directed at a contrasting setting – a ten-minute scene of a well-off family lunch, dizzying in its rapid-fire, hollow chatter, evoking a sense of internal conspiracy. The puzzle begins to take shape when the family matriarch suffers a heart attack and, in a moment of delirium on her deathbed in the hospital, confesses to her granddaughter Olga (played by Popistașu herself) that, as a lawyer under Ceaușescu, she facilitated the adoptions of orphans abroad, and some might have ended up in organ trafficking. After dying the next day, she leaves Olga more puzzled than mournful, burdened with a secret that makes her question her family’s moral integrity. Like some sort of Laura Kövesi, Olga embarks on a quest for justice – yet beyond the internet videos of Romania’s horrifying orphanages in the final years of communism, shown in stark close-up, she meets only denial, indifference and faint traces of efforts to erase the past, both institutionally and within her own circle.

Equally as thought-provoking as the look at abandoned children under Ceaușescu’s abortion ban, echoing what Cristian Mungiu began in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [+leggi anche:
recensione
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intervista: Cristian Mungiu
intervista: Oleg Mutu
scheda film], is the portrait of Romania’s affluent bourgeoisie: spacious apartments in lavish Parisian or minimalist Nordic style, fancy professions in the wine industry, gym routines, meticulously curated lifestyles… Three decades after the revolution, the offspring of top communist-era officials finally live “like in the West”, and even Olga’s homosexuality is accepted within the family as a sign of their progressive views. Yet, just like in the West, they carry a colonial-like guilt over their ancestors exporting dark-skinned children for unclear purposes, though no moral dilemma is enough to make them give up what has been acquired thus far. Still, by introducing a dispute between Olga and her father near the end, in which he urges her to stop her quasi-witch hunt, the auteurs seem to take neither one side nor the other, but their film also leaves no room for a clear conscience. It rather raises the burning question of whether a clear conscience is even possible.

Y was produced by Romania’s Tangaj Production in co-production with Greece’s View Master Films.