Cristi Puiu’s most recent film is a three-in-one project: it is an adaptation of Vladimir Solovyov’s Three Conversations, a period drama beautifully recreating the turn of the twentieth century, and a philosophical symposium. Divided into 6 parts—one for each protagonist—this study of the well-mannered, yet intellectually fierce and, at times, condescending, theoretical debates, present a “slice of life” that froze in its eternal futility.

Only years before WWI, in an aristocratic manor somewhere in Transylvania, the wealthy businessman Edouard, the landowner Nikolai, the young and naïve Olga, the mature and ironic Madeleine, Ingrida—the wife of a Russian general—and the butler Istvan exchange ideas on war and peace, good and evil, religion, identity, and politics.

Malmkrog is a grand feast for the eye as it is for the mind: the abundance of visual details is matched by the dialogue packed with hard concepts. Winner of the Encounters Award for the Best Director at Berlin Film Festival, Cristi Puiu declared that his film is “prophetic.”