Aferim! (2016)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Smart, visually arresting, and scathingly funny, Aferim! depicts a world that many American filmgoers have never seen -- but will still, in many respects, find utterly familiar.
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Cast
as Costandin
as Carfin
as Ionita
as Boyar Iordache Cîndescu
as Craftman's Wife
as The Priest
as Craftman
as Sultana
as Zambila
as Traveler at the Inn
as Vasile
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Critic Reviews for Aferim!
All Critics (40) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (1)
The tone is Rabelaisian and earthily comic in the minimalist, picturesque squalor of the settings.
With a title that translates roughly as Attaboy!, this engaging and percipient period comedy focuses on the enslavement of the Roma people in 19th-century Romania.
Somehow director Radu Jude's decision to film in black-and-white only heightens that sense of reality: It's as if the film is some ancient newsreel.
Shot in stark black and white, the picture's sense of place and time is strong - pungently so.
It's a tough world out there, and Costandin has found a way to survive in it. It's not always pretty, but in "Aferim!" it's never less than interesting.
Shot in black and white with fade-out transitions, the movie harks back to classic westerns. But it's also distinctly modern.
Audience Reviews for Aferim!
Radu Jude crafts this visually classic Western in black and white with a camera that seems to glide in wide-angle long shots, and uses a comical - and curiously theatrical - approach to show the racism and sexism of a time that doesn't seem so distant from modern Romanian society.
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Aferim! Quotes
| Merchant: | Women shall be less castigated than men. |
| Sultana: | Life out of life, life out of lifelessness. |