Film
Malmkrog
At a country estate somewhere in Transylvania around 1900, five aristocrats spend a winter's day arguing in French about war, progress, Christianity, morality and the Antichrist, while the servants bring in the next course.
About
Cristi Puiu adapted Vladimir Solovyov's Three Conversations, an 1899 philosophical dialogue about war and the end of history, into three and a half hours of aristocrats talking in a house. It won the directing prize in the Encounters strand at the Berlinale in 2020, the festival's new section for formally radical work, which is where it belongs.
Nikolai has assembled guests at his estate: Madeleine, Olga, Edouard and Ingrida, plus an ailing general upstairs. They speak French, as their class did. Over six chapters they argue about whether war can ever be just, whether Europe is a Christian civilisation, what the Russians owe the Turks, and what would actually happen if the Antichrist appeared. Puiu films in extremely long takes with a camera that pans slowly around rooms and sometimes leaves the speakers entirely to follow a servant into a corridor. There is no score, no exterior action and almost no plot.
It is the most demanding film in this catalogue and makes no apology for it. What holds it is the sense of a whole social order talking itself towards a catastrophe it cannot see coming — fourteen years before 1914 — and Puiu's insistence that the servants moving silently through the frame are the film's real subject. Admirers put it among the great achievements of Romanian cinema. It requires the right evening.
Where to Watch
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Streaming availability via JustWatch. Last checked 2026-08-30.
Top Cast
Agathe Bosch
Madeleine
Ugo Broussot
Edouard
Marina Palii
Olga
Frédéric Schulz-Richard
Nikolai
Diana Sakalauskaité
Ingrida
Awards, Festivals & Mentions
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Winner — Best Director Award, Encounters, Berlin International Film Festival (2020)
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Berlin International Film Festival 2020 — Encounters
