Child's Pose

Child's Pose (Poziţia copilului, 2013) is a Romanian drama you can watch online on iFILM — it took the Golden Bear at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival. One cold evening, Barbu runs down a child at speed. The boy dies. Barbu faces three to fifteen years.

His mother Cornelia, played by Luminița Gheorghiu, moves immediately. She pressures witnesses, deploys her connections, arranges conversations with the right people. Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) is 32, closed off, and did not ask for any of this. She helps anyway. Director Călin Peter Netzer builds the entire film around this standoff: a mother who cannot accept that her son is answerable for himself, and a son without the energy to stop her.

Gheorghiu's performance is quietly unsettling — Cornelia is recognisable, even understandable, and still impossible to watch without discomfort. Stream Child's Pose (2013) online on iFILM.