The Delta of Bucharest – Layers in Time
What do a bank robbery that took place in Romania in the ‘50s and a piece of land that was forcefully flooded at the orders of Ceausescu have in common? Both are events that have reverberated across time and have been the subjects of documentaries that were released almost simultaneously: Reconstruction (dir. Irene Lusztig, 2002) and The Great Communist Bank Robbery (dir. Alexandru Solomon, 2004) in the case of the first, and Acasă, My Home (dir. Radu Ciorniciuc, 2020) and The Delta of Bucharest (dir. Eva Pervolovici, 2020) for the latter. What I mean by that is: in the arts, it’s not imperatively necessary for two creators to come to similar conclusions at the same time, while working on different paths – but when it does happen, it’s worth taking a better look at such a process. And sometimes one of them – the more prestigious or well-rounded – may overshadow the other, without it being a fair state of affairs. Just look at how The Delta of Bucharest seems to encourage, on the surface, parallels with Radu Ciorniciuc’s feature (and sometimes the two stories even end up overlapping, such as the moments in which both films pursue the life of the Enache family, the last inhabitants of the Vacaresti Delta), only to end up denying them, by taking distance from the predominant approach in Acasă, My Home and cultivating a shape of its own.
Film critic and journalist; writes regularly for Dilema Veche and Scena9. He studied film theory in Grenoble, Paris, Dublin.
