The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Cristi Puiu / RO, 2005 / 154 min.
Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu produced a widely acclaimed indictment against the Rumanian health care system. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is regarded as one of the early milestones of the Romanian New Wave. Film selected by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Elderly alcoholic Dante Remus Lazarescu is given the runaround by doctors all the while visibly deteriorating. This tragi-comic odyssey through overcrowded hospitals, meeting cold-hearted physicians that just don’t care about a delirious old man who smells of urine and vomit (“Drive him around until he falls into a coma, then come back”). In contrast to the famous Lazarus, Lazarescu never reawakens.
Puiu Lazarescu's darkly humorous nighttime ambulance ride is portrayed in real time. The film won the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the BBC Four World Cinema Award.
Film selected by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Nuri Bilge Ceylan picked The Death of Mr. Lazarescu for the film programme accompanying his exhibition at Eye. The link with Ceylan is clear: both create patiently developing X-rays of human interaction: what on earth do we subject each other to – in the light of our mortality?
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Director
Cristi Puiu
Production year
2005
Country
RO
Original title
Moartea domnului Lazarescu
Length
154 min.
Language
Romanian
Subtitles
ENG
Format
DCP
Part of
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Eye Filmmuseum presents the first Dutch exhibition devoted to the work of acclaimed Turkish filmmaker and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan. For this occasion, the museum is bringing together his prize-winning films and lesser-known landscape photographs for the very first time. That combination reveals not only Ceylan’s masterly photographic eye and sense of composition, but also the deeply compassionate way he explores universal themes from a Turkish perspective.
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