Romanian New Wave filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu is in prep mode on what will be his eighth feature film for what he is hoping would be a planned September shoot — if this is the case we can lasso this as a Cannes 2026 hopeful. Porumboiu revealed some deets at the Visions du Réel film festival.
In what would be a second consecutive film shot in his current dwelling of France (locations close to Biarritz), MK2 Films and Lumen’s Juliette Schrameck (she recently co-produced László Nemes’ Árva and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value) are backing the project. The filmmaker is currently in casting mode – and worth noting — unlike The Whistlers (read review), all speaking parts in in French. The filmmaker is keeping the logline to this sixth fiction untitled feature close to his chest but mentioned that it is different from the rest of the body of his work to date and it’s an adventure with musical elements. We imagine the project will be introduced to buyers at Cannes next month and financing will be further pieced together.
A Cannes Film Festival mainstay being discovered via the Directors’ Fortnight folks with the Caméra d’Or winning 12:08 East of Bucharest, his masterwork to date was his sophomore feature in the Un Certain Regard-winning Police, Adjective in 2009. He has followed this up with When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (a Locarno selection in 2013), The Treasure (Un Certain Regard selection in 2015) and his first competition film for the Palme with The Whistlers (2019).
