ROFEST TRENDS – Chicago Festival 2025

The Rofest Trends Chicago Festival 2025 brings to the forefront one of the most sensitive and defining themes of recent history: the memory of Romanian communism and the echo of the December 1989 Revolution.
Conceived as a space for reflection, dialogue, and cultural recovery, this year’s festival offers a bold selection of films, a deeply moving multimedia installation, and a poetry recital that bring back into the attention of both American and Romanian audiences the moments when freedom became possible through sacrifice.
The 2025 edition will take place on December 6-7 at AMC Theatre River East 21 in Chicago (BUY TICKETS – link – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rofest-trends-chicago-2025-tickets-1970321286006), and will also be available online, throughout United States, from November 30 to December 10 on the dedicated platform: rofest.com/stream.
The Memory of Communism and the Revolution – A Necessary Exercise in Lucidity Through Cinema
In an era when the present seems increasingly eager to forget, cinema remains one of the most powerful tools for preserving truth and humanity. Films about communism and the 1989 Revolution are more than visual pages of the past; they are forms of cultural resistance – ways for today’s generations to understand the emotions, fears, injustices, and courage of those who lived through those times.
The importance of these artistic representations lies in their ability to open intergenerational dialogue, raise uncomfortable questions, provoke reflection, and, above all, prevent the repetition of collective trauma. Cinema becomes an archivist of emotion, a witness of history, and a teacher of civic consciousness.
Program of the 2025 Onsite Edition
This year’s selection brings together a series of powerful Romanian productions that capture both the fragility of life under communism and the tension, chaos, and hope of the Revolution:
– Anul Nou care n-a fost (The New Year That Never Came) – directed by Bogdan Mureșanu
– Pădurea de Molizi (The Spruce Forest) – directed by Tudor Giurgiu
– War Boy – directed by Marian Crișan
– Moromeții 3 (The Moromete Family 3) – directed by Stere Gulea
Multimedia Installation: “35+1 – The Untold Story of a Revolution” by Andrei Novac
A central element of this edition, the installation combines poetry, imagery, and sound memories to convey what often does not fit into history books: the raw emotion of newly won freedom, human fragility in the face of violence, and the voices of those who never lived to see the next day.
The project becomes a bridge between art forms – a contemporary and sensitive way of telling the story of the Revolution.
A Festival Dedicated to Truth and Cultural Responsibility
Rofest Trends Chicago Festival 2025 offers Romanian and international audiences in Chicago a rare opportunity: to look back in order to better understand the present and the future. Through films, poetry, and multimedia art, the festival pays homage to those who lived, resisted, and changed history.
This edition is not only a commemoration – it is an invitation to empathy, knowledge, and responsibility. Because memory must not only be preserved, but also shared – and cinema remains one of the most powerful ways to keep it alive.

Agenda ROFest. Trends Chicago 2025:

Andrei Novac – THE UNTOLD STORY OF A REVOLUTION – book launch

Romanian poet Andrei Novac will launch his poetry book “36 – The Untold Story of a Revolution” that poetically reconstructs the destinies of 36 people who fell during the days of the 1989 Romanian Revolution.

THE NEW YEAR THAT NEVER CAME + Q&A with director Bogdan Mureșan

THE SPROUCE FOREST/ PĂDUREA DE MOLIZI directed by Tudor Giurgiu

WARBOY + Q&A with director Marian Crișan

THE MOROMETE FAMILY 3 directed by Stere Gulea

Agenda ROFest. Trends Stream 2025:

High School Thieves – Directed by Tudor Petremarin

Four teens sell SAT subjects online to fund their dreams: college, studio, dad’s approval and adventure. Their scheme runs smoothly until reality and consequences catch up with them.

Occasional spies director Oana Giurgiu

In the spring of 1944, the fate of many Allied pilots who fell in Eastern Europe was unknown. The MI9 office in Cairo decides to recruit agents from among the Zionists who had emigrated from these countries to Palestine before the war. Their mission? Find the prisoners and organize a potential escape. The occasional spies will soon find themselves caught among war, politics, and personal life.

Freedom directed by Tudor Giurgiu

During Romania’s 1989 revolution, Sibiu witnesses a violent attack on a police station that spirals into armed clashes between soldiers, police, protesters and secret police.

HORIZON directed by Marian Crișan

Trying to find their “luck”, Lucian (András Hatházi) and Andra (Rodica Lazăr) – husband and wife – take over the management of a lost cabin somewhere in the Apuseni Mountains. Things seem to be going well until Lucian realizes that everything that happens on the mountain and at the cabin is controlled by Zoli (Bogdan Zsolt), a head of the illegal logging mafia.

FAULT CONDITION directed by Cătălin Saizescu

Inspired from the tragic event of August 2010, when several premature newborn babies died in the fire that took place in the Intensive Therapy Ward of Giulesti Maternity in Bucharest. The film tells the love story of two teenagers, Melania and Emi, who were caught in the middle of the catastrophe.

THE MADMAN by Igor Cobileanski

Set in Romania (1992), it tells the story of Sava, considered mentally ill. When the hospital building is returned to a monastery, all patients are transferred to other hospitals. Sava, however, escapes, but returns.

ANOTHER LOTTERY TICKET by Paul Negoescu

Dinel, Sile and Pompiliu want to get rich by mining crypto but they soon manage to lose the USB stick with their digital fortune.

THE LAW GANG by Mihaela Anitei

A story about seven law students who face various high-pressure situations, being forced to confront them together while searching for—or stumbling upon—solutions. One of them has a gravely ill daughter, and the others try to help him, but end up complicating things even more.

NIGHT OF THE BEAR by Răzvan Macovei

Three 17-year-olds share emotionally-charged stories of their family life.

THE INHERITANCE by Marian Fărcuț

Petre goes to the police to report the death of the old man he was supporting in exchange for the house he would leave him as an inheritance. The local police, together with Petre, set out to investigate the circumstances, but upon arriving at the scene, they find that the old man has disappeared.

THE BLACK HOUSE by Dumitru Grosei

A surgeon from a big city has a teenager die on the operating table and the doctor comes to a small village to return the envelope of money he took for the operation to the boy’s mother.

THE GIFT by Dumitru Grosei

A child receives a pair of binoculars from his father as a Christmas gift, but the boy wants more, he wants to go hunting with his father.

THE SINGING TRAM by Tudor Pojoni

A lovesick teenager decides to defend his girlfriend’s honor in front of a nasty boy from the neighborhood. It’s too late to change his mind.

CORI AND WILLI by Tudor Pojoni

Corina, a 45-year-old Romanian immigrant, works as a nurse caring for William, an elderly former Nazi soldier in World War II.

DO NOT FORGET YOUR RIGHT! by Cătălin Neamțu

Elena, a young woman born and raised in the countryside, with a “basic” education, tries to find a way to overcome her condition. She goes to Bucharest and takes an exam at the Faculty of Journalism, where she is admitted. Nevertheless, she is still under the strict supervision of her mother, who checks on her by phone every day, “bullying” her with more or less useful advice.

BIRDWOMAN by Gheorghe Preda

Ana lives with her husband in a remote village. touched by a mysterious illness he always needs special care. During this time, Ana searches obsessively for something in the forests that surround their home. Search that will prove fatal to the woman after all.

WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES by Laura Georgescu Baron

A regular person, named Bobo, who usually is doing the same thing every day, tired of the routine, starting to wish and believe if he had another person’s status, he could be happy. In his subconscious, the wish for changing becomes stronger every day. The change began to happen, reaching the point that it was no longer controllable. The dreamt potential happiness starts to change into a strong feeling of discontent or not?

ZIMNICEA by Bogdan Naumovici

This is the true story of what happened in Zimnicea, Romania, on March, 4, 1977, the day of the great earthquake. Everybody knew that 80% of the city was destroyed that day, and they kept knowing that for more than 35 years. It was only in 2012 that the truth emerged, that it was Communism and not the earthquake that brought Zimnicea down.