Sieranevada

Sieranevada (2016) is a Romanian drama by Cristi Puiu — watch it online on iFILM. A Bucharest neurologist named Lary returns from Paris and drives to his mother's apartment with his wife. The occasion is a family meal marking the first anniversary of his father's death. The priest they're waiting for doesn't show.

While the family waits, the flat fills with relatives who argue about the Paris attacks, CIA conspiracies, old grievances, and whose grief outranks whose. Puiu — the director of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu — keeps a handheld camera loose in the rooms, following conversations that never resolve into anything. Mimi Brănescu holds the center as Lary: watchful, tired, saying far less than he thinks.

The film screened in Cannes 2016 Un Certain Regard and runs 173 minutes — almost entirely in one apartment. That's either the point or the problem, depending on your patience. For viewers who can sit with it, the pressure building inside those walls adds up to something recognizable and uncomfortable about family, collective grief, and all the noise people make to avoid saying the actual thing. Watch Sieranevada online on iFILM.