Release Date: 30 May 2016In post-Ceaușescu Romania, a hapless slacker Ovidiu, seeking a way to finance his own independence, agrees to courier a bag of ‘medical supplies’ to Bucharest. Taking two friends along for the ride, their high spirits come to an abrupt end when a sinister red Jeep follows and attempts to force them off the road. A straightforward journey suddenly becomes a life threatening ordeal...
Stuff and Dough is the debut feature film from award-winning director Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Aurora, Sieranevada). Notable for its low-key naturalism, suspense, subtle social commentary, and ethical and moral complexity, this film led and ushered in the miraculous New Romanian Cinema which is now applauded the world over.
Second Run present Stuff and Dough from a brand new HD restoration, and the DVD also includes Cristi Puiu's award-winning 2004 short film Cigarettes and Coffee (Un cartuș de Kent și un pachet de cafea, 2004), and a newly filmed, exclusive interview with director Cristi Puiu.
• Presented from a new high-definition digital transfer, approved by the director.
• Exclusive, new filmed interview with director Cristi Puiu.
• Cristi Puiu’s Cigarettes and Coffee - winner of the 2004 Berlin Film Festival Award for Best Short Film.
• 12-page booklet featuring a new essay by arts journalist and film critic Carmen Gray.
• New and improved English subtitles translation.
• Released for the first time on home video in the English-speaking world.
Directed by Cristi Puiu
Screenplay - Cristi Puiu, Răzvan Rădulescu
Cinematography - Silviu Stavilă
Editor - Ines Barbu
Sound - Andrei Pap, Călin Potcoavă
Set design - Andreea Hasnaș
Main Cast
Alexandru Papadopol - Ovidiu
Dragoș Bucur - Vali
Ioana Flora - Betty
Luminița Gheorghiu - Mother
Răzvan Vasilescu - Marcel Ivanov
Doru Ana - Doncea
Constică Drăgănescu - Father
Radu Muntean's award-winning Romanian
film
Tuesday, After Christmas is also available from Second Run.
2001 Cannes Film Festival / Director’s Fortnight
2001 Thessaloniki Film Festival / Winner: FIPRESCI Prize
2001 Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema /
Winner: Special Prize
2001 Thessaloniki Film Festival /
Winner: Best Actor (Alexandru Papadopol)
2001 Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema /
Winner: "Findling" Award
2001 Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema /
Winner: Special Prize
2002 Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema / Winner: Youth Jury Abasto Award
2002 Angers European First Film Festival /
Winner: Procirep Award
"Almost casually assembles the elements of a stripped-down highway thriller, a throwback to American gear-grinders of the 1960s and ’70s like Two-Lane Blacktop or Duel. But though it is suspenseful, unnerving and agile in its techniques, Stuff and Dough has more than speed and danger on its mind... impressive in its self-confidence, its candour and its stringent, undogmatic contemporary relevance"
A O Scott, The New York Times
"A suspenseful and thought-provoking work. Recalling several classic films including The Wages of Fear and Breathless... there are tense moments on par with Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear...
The conflation of genres - crime thriller, road picture, family melodrama - keeps the viewer guessing and on edge. Puiu transforms an absorbing story into a haunting look at the frailty of the human condition... Stuff and Dough is a small triumph" Film Journal International
"[Puiu's] spiky debut feature, Stuff and Dough, had already strongly hinted at his capabilities as an unblinking social observer, a darkly humorous satirist, and a showman capable of whipping up scenes of frazzled intensity from nothing"
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
"The dark, funny, mysteriously affecting 2001 debut of Romanian director Cristi Puiu... blends the rhythms of ordinary life with a subtly ominous atmosphere and elements of thriller... It’s a terrific little movie, gritty, real, ironic, ruthless and deeply humane. Aspiring American filmmakers should study it before they go off and make yet another faux-earnest, self-pitying indie" Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
