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Absolutely brilliant

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

A grand film from Romania, directed with surety by Radu Jude, is even stronger because it is dealing with age old bigotry against gypsies, offered in contemporary language (many F bombs here – at least in the translation) that suits the theme well, and since we are dealing with prejudices on every level, the choice to make the film in Black and White makes it all the more pungent.AFERIM! Is not only an interesting historical statement, but it is also a parody of the religious practices of the 19th century – Christian monasteries and encountered priests on the road speak of why gypsies are inferior descendants of Noah's son Ham and there for are to be reviled. But gypsies are not the only people who are mocked by the father/son travelers in this quest for capturing a renegade gypsy: the father speaks about the nasty traits of the Turks, the Greeks, the English, the French, etc etc etc leaving no one in the world (which by the way is not round but ends in a precipice!). But on to the story – and there is one worth seeing: 'Set in early 19th century Wallachia, when a local policeman, Costandin, is hired by Iordache, a boyar (local noble), to find Carfin, a Gypsy slave who had run away from the boyar's estate after having an affair with his wife, Sultana. Costandin sets out to find the fugitive, beginning a journey full of adventures. Gypsy slavery lasted from the 14th century up until the middle of the 19th century, a situation which is very little known and almost nonexistent in the public debate today, although its impact continues to influence Romania's social life.'This little film slipped by viewers and it is hopeful that under the auspices of BIG WORLD PICTURES it will garner enough attention that audiences today will witness the very profound lessons it tells with such a gift of comedic dialogue. We all have much to learn from this film.

The second movie for me from this director after a beautiful child custody dramedy, 'Everybody in Our Family'. This was totally different, a historical theme that takes place 200 years early to the present. This is a black and white flick that perfectly blends with the timeline of the narration. The Romania's submission for the 2016's Oscars. I have not seen all the foreign movie nominees, but having seen the out of the contest films like this and Brasil's 'The Second Mother', they are a lot better than the actually in the race film, 'A War'.Coming to this movie, I was almost certain that I wasn't going to write a review after knowing about it through the trailer and the synopsis despite good ratings and praised by the critics. Because I felt this must be a boring kind, so was thinking to get over with it. Like there's a saying, don't judge a book by its cover, it happened right here for me with this movie. So this is where I realised after the watch that the Academy Awards was totally wrong for snubbing it. In fact, this was one of the best foreign movies I have seen in the last six months or so."When a wise man opens his mouth, open your ear."They might have had a solid reason for that, that I don't know, but my guess is the film's ending. The opening was slow, the dialogues were loud, but sometime foolishly funny and sometimes wisely funny. Overall you must pay close attention, so that you can enjoy jokes. Definitely a wonderful adventure, like any other man hunt films, this was so serious on that affair, but viewers won't realise that till the final scene. A well supported music throughout to tell an incredible tale about two men on the mission who meet different people, land, culture and language.It is 1835, in the Eastern Europe region, Wallachia, the father-son duo from the police force on a trail to track down a runaway slave. They must go beyond their territorial limits to find him. On their way, they came forwards to the people they just met needed help, and vice versa, After the intense search they grab him in the remote place, but his version of the story to flee differs. So what comes later is the final act and a very shocking conclusion."Fear is shameful, but healthy. It's God's gift."Not so interested to very into it is something that I was not expected. The reason was obvious it was funnier than I thought. Besides that, I was uncomfortable with the slavery theme. It's turning me off from having a good time and beginning to concern. But that's how the old world was, as it was based on the old documents and texts of the real event. After that horrifying finale, the bold statement from the father to son that goes like this 'God, even looks after worms and we can't look after each other' is what made me think we had come a long way since, yet do everything has changed now? And you know the answer to that.It was not an unusual storyline, I have seen hundreds of other similar films, but it was from the different country, hence different language, culture, comedies, landscapes and different outcome result. Well, this film gets you at with the different moods at the different level of the narration. A fine merges of multiple genre, and yet delivers more than you anticipating. If you are wondering what is the meaning of the title, 'Well Done' or 'Bravo' is the English translation.Low budget movie? But, that's the reason this movie makes a very interesting. Because the 19th century tale and this film that kind feels like made in the early 30s (except the high framerate) pretty unlike to any modern black and white films. Definitely a must see if you're interested in this year's Oscar nominees for the best foreign movies, even though it did not make.8½/10

Indeed, you have to know the 19th century background of Romania, however it portraits it in a very good manner: the atmosphere of the epoch and the subject is dealt with in depth! It seems that we already saw this movie (or its subject)with other slaves (mostly black people in other countries endorsing slavery)however this one is a special case.All actors are excellent and the black and white colors intensify the dramatic aspects (wonderful forest takes!). I am lucky to know modern Romanian, because the dialog is very important, revealing the behavior, tradition and prejudices of the time (that in some areas of the country are still there...)far away from so called "politically correctness" endorsed in the western culture!(watch the priest opinion about different nations, especially the Jews!). In relation to dialogue, the last sentences of the father to his shocked son are an excellent example of how most of the people behave in face of horrors and injustice!

By Daniel K. Buntovnik"Aferim!" is (virtually) the first film ever to depict the enslavement of Rromani people that occurred for some five hundred years in the present day territories of Romania. The film's writers set out elucidate a period which Romanian society is for the most part reticent to acknowledge — much less critically engage with. The void is not less existent in the Anglosphere. While critics have proclaimed "Aferim!" to be "something new", they have also touted the film as a Western à la Vlach, pointing to influence from this genre observable in its frequent shots of expansive landscapes with men on horseback and wagons. This is hardly groundbreaking in and of itself, since the conventions and tropes of this seemingly quintessentially American film genre were long ago appropriated (and, to an extent, subverted) by Europeans on both sides of the Iron Curtain, giving us the Spaghetti Western and the Red Western, aka the Eastern. Both had significant overlaps with the Revisionist Western: a genre that undermines narratives of the Wild West as the domain of the white settler. "Aferim!" has also drawn comparisons to more recent American slave movies, but it is certainly much more than a rehash of these films, never losing sight of the brutal particularities of the 19th century Wallachian context.Insofar as this particular historical period has until recently remained unvisited by cinema, we are not coming back to anything, but approaching something new. What we do revisit in "Aferim!" are actually present day social attitudes (in particular, antiziganism). The Revisionist aspect of the film also means pushing back against what little narrative does exist acknowledging the enslavement of Rromani (and Tatar) people at the hands of the Romanian Orthodox Church, nobles, and principality-states. In Romania, the "official" narrative is to downplay and minimize the reality of Rroma enslavement. Its main tactics are to highlight alleged fundamental differences between "sclavie" (slavery) and "robie" (another supposedly milder form of servitude unique to this region). This stress of difference between "sclavie" and "robie" is at the same time accompanied by a playing up of the similarities between "robie" and feudal serfdom. "Aferim!" demolishes these pedantic arguments by laying bare the chasm of difference between social statuses ascribed to Gypsies and Wallachian peasants. In this regard, "Aferim!" is a "Revisionist Eastern".Despite its orientation towards the past, the film is clearly forward thinking. At one point, Costandin engages in an interrogatory monologue about relations between the living and the dead; he wonders how "we" (21st century people) will remember "them". What will we say about "them"? But this monologue is ambiguous. "They", the dead, could be he and his son (and the larger white, Orthodox community they belong to), but the dead could just as easily be the Gypsy slaves in their captivity. Costandin's comments reflect the research of ethnologist Patrick Williams presented in his book "Gypsy World: The Silence of the Living and the Voices of the Dead". For Williams, the way that European societies erase and render Rromani communities invisible was reflected in the way the French Gypsies he lived with (seemed to) render the dead invisible by avoiding talking directly about them and by discarding their belongings whenever possible, and treating the belongings with a special level of care and respect if it was not possible or very undesirable to discard them. "In order to constitute their real presence," Williams writes, "they have chosen to refer to real absence." Accordingly, Costandin is quite right when he concludes with the assumption that any breach of this silence will be a curse ("If our descendants do say anything about us, it will only be to curse us," he says, and I paraphrase.) "Aferim!" is a Revisionist pox upon the "official" narrative of Gypsy slavery because it does much to break the silence about it. The film brings dishonor to the dead partisans of slavery in exposing them as the cruel, naive, close- minded bigots that they were, and it may even bring shame to their descendants, those who have vicariously and transgenerationally inherited their attitudes. It was without a doubt for this very reason that King Carlos III of Spain demanded the erasure of any mention of the "Great Gypsy Round-up of 1749" (which resulted in decades of enslavement for Rroma in Spain) from the preamble to a new law on Gypsies in 1772 on the pretext that "it does little honor to the memory of my brother (Fernando VI)."Costandin illustrates a middle class psychology in a lot of ways. He exalts himself over the slave Carfin, while he practically cowers in fear of the master Iordache. Costandin almost seems to redeem himself when he shows skepticism towards the dehumanization of Rroma; he asks a spiritual authority if Gypsies are indeed human beings. He is not impervious to the injustice inherent in enslavement, but within the logical confines of the system, profit is simply higher on the priorities list. Costandin attempts to put "a human face" on slavery. When this proves to be impossible, social atomization allows him to sacrifice others on the altar of his narrow self-interest. Ultimately, "Aferim!" shows that promises of "gentler injustice" are likely to end in depraved perversity.