A decent effort by this first-time director who well deserved the FIPRESCI (international critics) prize that the film won at the Cottbus (Germany) festival in October 2013. This is a full-frontal presentation of the difficulties involved in growing up in one of the poorest countries in Europe, but one which avoids falling into the trap of misérabilisme. Cobileanski achieves a fine balance between hope and despair despite the film's downbeat ending, and the film's characters are depicted with a degree of sympathy that precludes caricature. The Unsaved does not seem to have had much of a commercial career to date (June 2014) but it deserves a wider audience, at least at festivals.
Review of The Unsaved
