MALMKROG, by acclaimed Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu, hits the big screen today. The film was featured at the Berlin Festival this year, where it won the Encounters Prize for Best Director.

Cristi Puiu is a director known for using the film camera as an instrument of an anthropological approach to cinema. In MALMKROG, he conquered the screen with a slow and thoughtful tableau vivant, erected in an imposing country house in Transylvania in the late 19th century.

Inspired by “The Three Dialogues and the Antichrist's Account” (1915) by Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviov, this period drama unfolds around a loquacious group of the social elite composed of a general, a nobleman, a politician and several aristocratic ladies. The group talks about Good and Evil, about God and humanity, about science and war, filling the mansion's sumptuous rooms with detailed reflections that create an austere and eloquent mise-en-scène.

The film has exhibitions at Cinema Nimas, in Lisbon; at TAGV - Academic Theater of Gil Vicente, in Coimbra; and at Cinema da Villa, in Cascais.