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Cristi Puiu

Cristi Puiu (born 3 April 1967) is a Romanian film director and screenwriter.

Biographic notes

Puiu's first interest in art was painting and in 1992, he was admitted as a student at the Painting Department of Ecole Superieure d'Arts Visuels in Geneva. After the first year he switched to film studies at the same school and graduated in 1996. After returning to Romania, Cristi Puiu started directing and writing his first films, generally enjoying critical success.

Activity

Director

Cristi Puiu's debut as a director was in 2001 with the low budget road movie Stuff and Dough (Marfa şi Banii) starring Alexandru Papadopol and Dragoş Bucur. The film received several awards in international film festivals and competed in the Quinzaines des Realisateurs section of the Cannes Film Festival. He continued with a short film, Cigarettes and Coffee (Un cartuş de Kent şi un pachet de cafea) (2004), which was awarded the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival.

His second film, The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (Moartea domnului Lăzărescu) (2005), features the drama of an old man who is carried by an ambulance from hospital to hospital all night long, as doctors keep refusing to treat him and send him away. The film was a critical success, being awarded with Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and numerous awards at other international film festivals.

Year 2006 brought 47 prizes for his film The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (Moartea domnului Lăzărescu) (2005), a lot of nominees in American Critics top 10 and in France also for magazines as Telerama and Les Incoruptibile.

Screenwriter

Cristi Puiu co-wrote the screenplays of both of his feature films Stuff and Dough (2001) and The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (2005) with Romanian writer Răzvan Radulescu. His short film Cigarettes and Coffee (2004) was also written by him. Also in collaboration with Răzvan Radulescu, Cristi Puiu wrote the screenplay for Niki and Flo for Lucian Pintilie, one of the most important Romanian directors. In 2005 German director Didi Danquart is making the movie Offset with a script written by Puiu.

Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest

Puiu intends to make a series of six movies entitled Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest to answer Éric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales series. He intends the series to consist of six love stories, The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu being the first story about love for one's fellow man.

The next five films should be about love between a man and a woman, love for one's children, love of success, love between friends, and carnal love. Cristi Puiu says that he already has a synopsis ready for each of these films.