The Dryden will screen Aferim! (Radu Jude, Romania/Bulgaria/Czech Republic 2015, 106 min., DCP, Romanian w/subtitles).

Eastern Europe, 1835. Two riders cross a barren landscape in the middle of Wallachia. They are the gendarme Costandin and his son. Together they are searching for a gypsy slave who has run away from his nobleman master and is suspected of having an affair with the noble's wife. On their odyssey they encounter people of different nationalities and beliefs: Turks and Russians, Christians and Jews, Romanians and Hungarians. Each harbors prejudices against the others that have been passed down from generation to generation. Radu Jude's third feature has been aptly compared to films as diverse as The Searchers and Pulp Fiction (the latter for its rambling, coarse, and endlessly entertaining dialogue), but the film is ultimately a moving parable about late-feudal Europe developed from historical documents and songs: its power structures and hierarchies, people's ideas of themselves and others, interaction with minorities, and the resulting conflicts. A Balkan Western in black and white that brings the cacophony of the times strikingly to life and explores the thematic arcs that stretch into the present..

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2016-Mar-14]