miracle 2021 movie review

‘Miracle’ Review: A Crime Drama That Could Rekindle Romanian Cinema

Bogdan George Apetri's rapt detective film begins in a convent and culminates in a terrifying crime, all the while investigating the society around it.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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The white-hot moment of the Romanian new-wave film renaissance is long in the past. “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” came out in 2005, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007. Other landmarks of Romanian cinema also now go back quite a ways, like “Police, Adjective” (2009), “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” (2010), and “Graduation” (2016). That’s not to say there haven’t been good Romanian films of late — earlier this year, I championed Two Lottery Tickets , a kind of droll Romanian Jim Jarmusch film. The bitter truth, though, is that over the last decade the profile of international impact and acclaim that Romanian cinema once held has radically diminished.

It might jump-start again with the appearance of “ Miracle ,” one of the best films I’ve seen at the Venice Film Festival . It’s the third feature written and directed by Bogdan George Apetri , and it shares many of the classic qualities of Romanian cinema. It’s an offhand and sardonically bleak portrait of the country as a place of disgruntled souls mired in the burnt embers of “socialism.” It features long, winding, digressive conversations. But it’s also a crime drama of absorbing authenticity, and if that entity once known as “the art-house audience” were still concretely there, watching movies in brick-and-mortar theaters like New York’s Lincoln Plaza Cinemas (can you really have an art-house audience without…a house?), I have little doubt that the movie would make its mark. Maybe it will anyway. “Miracle” is staged with an inexorable skill that tugs you along like a Patricia Highsmith novel. It’s a tale of mystery, of scalded innocence, and of the staggering evil that ordinary men can do.

The movie is the second part of a trilogy, and it features a sprinkling of characters from the first film, Apetri’s “Unidentified” (also a crime drama). But it expands on that film’s edgy mood of everyday dread. In the opening scene, Cristina (Ioana Bugarin) is preparing to take a trip out of the convent where she lives. Watching her in her black cloth habit, we assume she’s a nun. Actually, she’s a novice, who has been at the convent for only two months; she won’t be considered a nun for several more years. Just communicating that seemingly minor-but-maybe-not-so-minor detail is, in a sense, a spoiler — not because the film presents it as such a surprise, but because Apetri reveals crucial things throughout “Miracle” in a different order than you’d expect. The information spills out, at times almost at random, placing us in the position of a detective who has to keep re-assessing what he sees.

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Cristina, her lips parted in a gaze of dolorous anxiety, walks out of the convent and gets into a taxi, so that she can visit a hospital in the nearby town. The driver has a sister who is Cristina’s friend in the convent; that’s how the ride was arranged. But the driver is a prickly pill who won’t even call his sister by her rechristened nun name. Cristina explains that she’s going to the hospital because she suffers from a chronic headache, and there’s no reason not to believe her. But when she arrives, she walks into the Ob/Gyn clinic. We can guess why she’s there.

She’s arranged to meet that same driver at 5:00 p.m., so that he’ll return her to the convent. Instead, long after her appointment ends, she walks over to a line of taxis and gets into the next available one. This driver seems nicer: a nerd with a tersely sympathetic manner. He relaxes by lighting up a cigarette, and says that he has a wife and daughter. But appearances can be deceiving. When he stops the car so that Cristina can change back into her habit, she has a flash of nerves. And so do we. But she lets it pass, walking off to a wooded section near a bridge in order to change. Then we spot the driver through the trees, ambling toward her…

Apetri, who is 45, has lived in New York City for the last 19 years, and while he has said that he still identifies as a devoted citizen of Romania, you can sense an underlying trace of American immediacy in his work, the way you could in the early films of Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn. “Miracle” feels like it could almost be a second cousin to Refn’s “Pusher” trilogy. A police inspector arrives, named Marius, and the actor who plays him, Emanual Pârvu, in his trim haircut and owlish specs, looks like a handsome young literature professor. We assume that he’s going to be the civilized face of the law. But Pârvu, who appeared in “Graduation,” is a wily actor who throws curveballs without the audience seeing it. His Marius doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and feels he’s surrounded by them. It’s as if he has run out of all tolerance for the entropy of Romania — the bureaucratic inefficiency, the way that so many citizens (like his police partner) allow themselves to be crusted over with a Christian piety they don’t really believe in.

Marius, under his calm façade, is as possessed by this case as Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle was with nabbing the heroin smuggler in “The French Connection.” The second half of the movie is less a whodunit than a can-he-find-the-evidence-to-nail-him. Marius leads interrogations, but he also plants evidence, and when he encounters the victim (who we assume, for a while, might not even be alive), their communion, which starts with the simple act of Marius trying to get her to identify her attacker from a photo, evolves into a moment of haunting closeness and mystery. (There’s a key piece of dialogue the film doesn’t let us hear.) Marius isn’t just solving a crime, he’s trying to restore order to a place that has gone to the dogs.

That, at least, is the way that numerous characters in “Miracle” describe Romania. The country — and, it would seem, the country’s cinema — is mired in a kind of stubborn self-hatred. Maybe that, in its way, is one reason why the Romanian film movement of the 2000s began to fade. But it’s my impression (far from definitive, but a hopeful hunch) that there’s a new spirit at work in the nation’s cinema. “Two Lottery Tickets” had a chucklehead slyness I hadn’t seen in a Romanian film before. And “Miracle,” as it closes in on its heart of darkness, creates a slow-burn suspense that won’t quit. Bogdan George Apetri holds the audience and then, in the last scene, melts it with a single audacious teardrop.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Orrizonti Competition), Sept. 6, 2021. Running time: 118 MIN.

• Production: A The East Company Productions, Cineart TV Prague, Tasse Films production. Producers: Oana Iancu, Bogdan George Apetri.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Bogdan George Apetri. Camera: Oleg Mutu. Editor: Bogdan George Apetri.
• With: Ioana Bugarin, Emanuel Pârvu, Cezar Antal, Ovidiu Crișan, Valeriu Andriuță.      

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Miracle (2021) Film Review

Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode

Sheep wander freely through the mostly rural setting of Bogdan George Apetri’s finely crafted psychological thriller. Cognitively stunted by selective breeding, they are typically characterised as unimaginative, disinclined to process what’s going on around them, yet here they see everything, like God watching over His flock in the form of a lamb. It’s a film very much concerned with moral reckoning and danger to the soul, though without, at any stage, really depending on investment in religion.

Ioana Bugarin is Cristina, a young novice whom we see depart from a convent one day to get a ride to a hospital in the city. It isn’t hard to figure out why a 19-year-old might be making such a surreptitious journey, why she might want to change into civilian clothes en route or why she might want to see a very particular doctor. Through this and her subsequent activities in the city, we stay close to her, getting to know her not through words – she expresses practically nothing directly – but through her face and body, as she struggles to bear up under an emotional weight too great for one of her slender years. Whatever one might think of her decisions – which we won’t understand in full until much later – it is impossible not to feel for her.

Cristina never makes it home.

The second half of the film is carried by Emanuel Parvu as Detective Inspector Preda, the police officer in charge of the investigation into what has befallen her. “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” he recites when faced with a reluctant young nun who doesn’t want to betray her friend, but perhaps he is talking to himself. Like everyone we meet here, he has a secret. Unable to have the conversations that matter, he becomes increasingly erratic in his behaviour, worrying his colleagues. Is he on the verge of doing something terrible or might he, by a miracle, find a path to redemption?

There’s a lot of subtext here about male guilt and the ways in which both men and women endeavour to manage boundaries which maintain civilised behaviour. A colleague of Preda’s reveals that he’s thinking about marrying his girlfriend because he wants to become a father again, and Preda is horrified because of his age, but the film’s other observations about fatherhood highlight the frequent difference between ideals and lived realities. Cristina, meanwhile, takes on a saintly cast, but that doesn’t seem to reflect how she perceives herself, and it raises questions about how the male characters frame their understandings of her in order to justify their own choices. Far from being yet another film in which a woman’s suffering provides the impetus for a man’s actions, Miracle presents a story in which Cristina’s presence looms large throughout and she never completely seems to lose her agency.

With impressive cinematography at every stage, the film hinges on two magnificent slow, circular sequences, one in the middle and one at the end, each of which resets the narrative. They’re directed with incredible precision, almost flawless, whilst packing in a wealth of incident and meaning. By distinguishing these moments visually, Apetri lifts us out of the day to day into a space which is psychologically more volatile, a space in which impulsive actions can have world-shattering effects. It is no accident that both take place outdoors, in a less controlled space which contrasts with the narrow, tightly regulated spaces of the convent, the hospital or even the city streets. In the fields, under the gaze of the quietly gazing sheep, men must learn to master their own natures, or else risk destroying others and themselves.

From the very outset, this film is fraught with tension. Apetri builds it up slowly, skilfully, never overplaying his hand. It is only in the last few moments that viewers will feel able to breathe freely. At odds with the traditional structure of morality plays, Miracle suggests that there is something divine about the discovery of free will.

Director: Bogdan George Apetri

Writer: Bogdan George Apetri

Starring: Ioana Bugarin, Emanuel Parvu, Cezar Antal, Ovidiu Crisan, Valeriu Andriuta, Valentin Popescu, Marian Râlea, Nora Covali, Natalia Calin, Catalina Moga, Olimpia Malai, Vasile Muraru, Mircea Postelnicu, Dan Grigoras, Bogdan Farcas

Runtime: 118 minutes

Country: Romania, Czech Republic, Latvia

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Miracle Reviews

As in all Romanian cinema, it is underlined by a permanent evaluation of the country's contradictions, its sense of failure and guilt, and the attempts to find that miracle beating there, among the most mundane. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2023

Milagro paves its way towards a mysterious outcome, with a strong mystical imprint, again with water as an aggrandizing and deforming element, although open-ended enough not to impose its dogmas. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2023

A subtly directed thriller that examines a post-communist Romania devastated by corruption and bureaucracy... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Nov 22, 2022

A powerful and painful drama that’s expertly executed in every possible way.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2022

Nothing about Miracle is clear-cut or easy to comprehend, but it is compelling.

Full Review | Jun 11, 2022

Devastatingly brilliant. It's incredibly hard to watch.

Apetri...shows us how these people behave, and what they prioritize, and through their actions, we learn who they really are.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2022

The Romanians know how to make a policier.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 5, 2022

From its opening, there’s a distinct sense of unease shrouded over Miracle.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 3, 2022

“Miracle” is busy on the eye. As in a documentary, we follow the characters around from one task, whether grim or menial, to the next. Stand back, however, and Apetri’s careful patterning can be discerned.

Full Review | Jun 3, 2022

[T]he real impact of Miracle is in coming to understand how much we have misunderstood.

Spellbinding, suspenseful and engrossing.

The real miracle of this film is in its performances and direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 2, 2022

The narrative does not entirely pull itself into a satisfying arc, but the film nevertheless unfolds with dexterity and suspense.

Full Review | Jun 2, 2022

Apetri tells a story that’s as faithful to Romanian life and film as it is original in terms of exploring genre in a new way.

With impressive cinematography at every stage, the film hinges on two magnificent slow, circular sequences, one in the middle and one at the end, each of which resets the narrative.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 1, 2022

Notoriously brutal, the first part is as realistic as the unflinching idea of revenge that follows it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 24, 2022

Its violence, when it comes, is as pitiless as it is discrete.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 11, 2022

Oleg Mutus outstanding camerawork and a superb performance by Ioana Bugarin help to paper over the unevenness of Bogdan George Apetris film about a novice nun who experiences a horrific trauma and the investigation that ensues.

Full Review | Feb 26, 2022

Simple in scope, yet complex and precise in its execution, the result is a marvel befitting its title.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Nov 29, 2021

Where to Watch

Ioana Bugarin (Cristina Tofan) Emanuel Parvu (Marius Preda) Cezar Antal (Batin) Ovidiu Crisan (agentul Misu Macarie) Valeriu Andriuta (Albu) Valentin Popescu (Dr. Ivan) Marian Râlea (Dr. Mihaescu) Nora Covali (Maica Mina) Natalia Calin (Maica Stareta Sebastiana) Catalina Moga (Maica Sofia)

Bogdan George Apetri

A young nun sneaks out of her monastery to attend an urgent matter but never makes it back and a police detective's investigation into her fate, uncovers clues and revelations that lead not only to the truth but a miracle as well.

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From its opening, there’s a distinct sense of unease shrouded over “ Miracle ,” the third feature written and directed by Romanian filmmaker Bogdan George Apetri . Shooting in close-up or medium close-up for the most part, the film shows a young woman, Cristina ( Ioana Bugarin ), preparing to abscond from the convent where she lives.

As she makes her way out of the place, the camera stays in front of her, then moves to her side, then gets behind her, moving nearer, farther, nearer, like some kind of guardian angel, only of course it is not.

Fair of face and pale of skin, Cristina could be a figure out of a fairy tale, but she’s in a much darker mood than such characters. Frowning and tight-lipped, she’s not happy when her cranky cab driver insists that she sit up front with him. It soon transpires that the driver is the brother of a worker in the convent, and he’s giving Cristina a ride as a favor to her, and not the worried-looking, deathly quiet young woman. Soon he picks up a businessman as an extra fare. There’s some haggling about going off the meter when Cristina asks the driver to pull over to a secluded spot to change from her dark robes into a civilian outfit. For the scene, the camera looks in on the front seat throughout, in the manner of a Kiarostami picture. The driver and Cristina listen to the radio. The driver is particularly moved by the song “De-Ar Fi Sa VII” by Mihaela Runceanu, a Romanian pop diva who died in 1989. Every time the radio is on in this picture, it’s tuned to an oldies station, and listeners are moved to observe that things aren’t what they used to be.

Cristina is on her way to see a doctor; she mentioned headaches before leaving, but after the driver drops her outside a building and instructs her to meet him again at five that afternoon, she goes into an Ob/Gyn office. The questions this raises aren’t answers, because Cristina doesn’t keep the appointment with the cranky cab driver. Instead, she catches a ride with a more ostensibly pleasant cabbie. And here the very bad trouble starts.

The violence committed against Cristina is shown in a shot taken from a distance, traveling in a complete unbearable circle as we see little but hear an awful lot. After which we are back at the convent, and the camera is now following a police detective named Marius (Emanuel Parvu) whose probing questions and air of integrity make him look like the right man for this job.

But Marius is unusually fervent. He kicks his partner out of their car for spouting what Marius deems to be religious nonsense. And as he conducts an interrogation with a particularly non-communicative party (and she is non-communicative with good reason), the viewer has reason to believe the guy is literally out of his mind.

This episode of the film, too, culminates in shocking violence. But it also leads to the title event, which is puzzling in a great number of ways. The nature of the events depicted bring to mind past films by Bresson and Bergman (one thinks especially of the latter’s “The Virgin Spring”) but upon contemplation one realizes that whether allegorical or not, what the movie’s putting across is something that is itself vexed—like, in its view, the country in which it takes place.

Now playing in select theaters.            

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Miracle (2022)

118 minutes

Ioana Bugarin as Cristina Tofan

Emanuel Pârvu as Marius Preda

Cezar Antal as Batin

Ana Ularu as Dr. Natalia Marcu

• Bogdan George Apetri

Cinematographer

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Directed by Bogdan George Apetri

A young novice sneaks out of her convent to deal with a matter that cannot be delayed.

Ioana Bugarin Emanuel Pârvu Cezar Antal Ovidiu Crișan Valeriu Andriuță Valentin Popescu Marian Râlea Nora Covali Natalia Călin Cătălina Moga Ana Ularu Olimpia Mălai Vasile Muraru Mircea Postelnicu Dan Grigoraș Bogdan Farcaș Bogdan Tascu Ion Grosu Ecaterina Hâțu Ioana Dolănescu Vlad Dolănescu Sara Mihail Paul Fieroiu Nicolina Șerban Cristi Chiriac Florina Radoslav Lenuța Gergely

Director Director

Bogdan George Apetri

Producers Producers

Bogdan George Apetri Aija Bērziņa Oana Iancu Viktor Schwarcz Alexandru Iliescu

Writer Writer

Casting casting.

Cătălin Dordea

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography, assistant director asst. director.

Constantin Donici

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Minodora Șerban

Lighting Lighting

Production design production design.

Mihaela Poenaru

Special Effects Special Effects

Lucian Iordache

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Jindřich Červenka

Sound Sound

Karel Zámečník Jiří Klenka Mārtiņš Rozentāls

Costume Design Costume Design

Liene Dobrāja

Makeup Makeup

Bianca Boeroiu

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Bogdan Lazăr

The East Company Productions Cineart TV Prague Tasse Film

Czechia Latvia Romania

Alternative Titles

Milagro, 그들 사이의 기적, Dédales, Revelações, Το θαύμα, Cud, Csoda, Zázrak, Miracle - Storia di destini incrociati, Čudež

Thriller Drama

Releases by Date

01 sep 2021, 12 jul 2022, 25 jul 2022, 04 feb 2022, 05 may 2022, 26 may 2022, 03 jun 2022, 29 jun 2022, 14 apr 2022, 23 nov 2022, 07 dec 2022, releases by country.

• Digital 14 Cinema Virtual
• Digital 12 VOD
• Physical 12 DVD
• Premiere Venice International Film Festival
• Theatrical 18+

South Korea

• Premiere Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival
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Popular reviews

Review by shookone ★★★

combining - a meanwhile having become somehow classic - Romanian new wave style with an heavy handed catholic discourse. the simple observation we are already used to and immediately become immersed to - as usual - does work well, but ultimately turns into a narrative trick or treat cinema, and an overblown construction, where it starts to feel like a Se7en copycat.

however this is handcrafted well enough to be captivating through the whole two hours. also the deeply catholic quest has its moments, and the finale - old testament vs new testament - is located somewhere between frustration and astonishment. gonna leave it to Apetri: it's questionable, discuss-worthy, but it's something.

Review by BeBraveMorvern ★★★★

I considered writing “It’s a Romanian film” and leaving it at that. I’ve a tremendous appreciation for movies that can honestly explore darkness, but their output, from what little I’ve caught, has been punishing. 

This one is in long takes, real-time truths about irrational human nature, all in a drab palette, with no conspicuous beauty to soften the blows. It’s elegantly told, impactful, and provocative in many ways, including the open-ended title. 

It’s one tale told in two distinct halves. Somewhere around the middle, it swerves, from low-key realism to policier, from female to male. They’re linked not just by the central event but by a humanistic POV, an engaged eye on violence, forgiveness, and retribution. 

For the central crime, the camera pans away in a slow 360; it’s heard, not seen. You feel its psychic weight without feeling brutalized or voyeuristic. The film fest organizers thoughtfully gave a trigger warning.

Review by Stephen M ★★★★

A Romanian mystery about a brutal rape of a novice from a convent and the investigation that follows. It has many elements of the Romanian New Wave (although it’s not so new anymore since the movement emerged in the mid-2000s). Split into two related sections, we retrace the same story from the perspective of the victim and that of a driven police investigator. The scenes and the dialogue all reflect societal themes and conflicts in post-Communist Romania, even as we get absorbed in the mystery of who committed the rape and why.

What’s interesting is how director Bogdan George Apetri uses dialogue (sometimes more like debates) between characters to illustrate his societal themes. Many characters opine that things were better…

Review by luisdementia ★★★

Bajo la apariencia de una película de intriga, el director aprovecha para reflexionar sobre cuestiones religiosas y sociales referentes a su país. Puede que la trama acabe diluida frente a su exceso de misterio y ambigüedad.

Review by _samore_ ★½ 2

ZFF 2021 - #23

no miracle here, someone just did an overlong, religious romanian tatort with long takes, a manipulative story and unneccessary violence. and i don't even like the german tatort.

Review by mariomovieboy ★★★★

I think I’m in the minority when I say I like the long and slow movies. I was absorbed watching the 19-year-old nun leave the convent without permission and take a secret taxi ride, set up in something like a covert operation by another nun’s brother, for a doctor appointment at the hospital. There are long discussions between the driver and with a third rider in the cab that touch on science versus religion while the nun sits in silence looking out the window at the long and winding road. After stopping along the way to change into street clothes, things don’t happen as we expect during after the doctor visit, and as she heads back to the convent with…

Review by Hatim Saad ★★★★★

Along with Dune, the best new movie I have seen this year. I have to give very special mention to the Director/Writer Bogdan George Apetri who did a fantastic job in grabbing the audience throughout the whole film with a combination of magnificent screenplay and long one shots with great cinematic language and sound that gave a lot to the film. The Movie has Mystery element in it that keeps us as audience always thinking throughout the whole film, it definitely demands from you much but as very rewarding in delivering great plot twists or what you can say about them as miracles. Performances are aces all across the board, the rehearsal process must have been very tiring and difficult with long takes and one shots and every one of the actors delivered very highly with special mention for the two main protagonists that where really the pivots of the whole movie.

Review by 🅺🅴🅽🅿🅱🅾🆆🅴🆂 ★★★★

In almost every scene, Director Bogdan George Apetri confidently captures the subtlety of the ever present Societal deception & corruption, which is both expected & accepted with notably blase, ingrained responses.

Slow paced, with long distance shots & seriously sardonic humor, yet still managing a constant dark & claustrophobic tension - I wasn’t clear about the selected ongoing music & discussion, but everyone seemed to fondly link it to the Past, so …

Performances were all tremendous, & it’s a movie suited for the big screen. Pre-screening, the Director also mentioned this movie was #2 of a trilogy.

From the 2023 ‘Europa, Europa Film Festival’ .

Review by CJ Johnson ★★★★

Wow. This was gripping, challenging stuff. Really comes at your sympathies, preconceptions and moral codes from many angles and is willing to confront - or force you to confront - them all. Deeply compelling.

Review by JP Fournier ★★★★

Compelling crime/mystery that lets the audience know the crime and the who commits it in the halfway point, yet reveals secrets along the way as the characters are dealing with the crime. The audience only receives the full story as story leads into the film's weighty ending. The opening of the film follows a novice, Cristina Tokan, masterfully played by Ioana Bugarin, who's leaving her convent to get some medical assistance for some concerning matters. Every interaction, every conversation spoken around her, and every delay her goal is felt though her patient, uneasiness, and timidity. This situation of hers will put her faith and lifestyle to the test and within this world that appears to be moving religious beliefs into…

Review by Steve Erickson ★★★½

MIRACLE places a heavy emphasis on a certain plot point by its very title (as well as the placement of that point.) But if it suggests arthouse Catholicism, it also feels like an adaptation of a European mystery novel. It even suggests a made-for-TV procedural influenced by the Dardenne brothers and Cristi Puiu. Director Bogdan George Apetri uses long takes and pans extremely well. The most harrowing scene is depicted in a 360-degree pan distant enough to avoid a voyeuristic gaze but designed carefully (especially through sound) to convey its full horror. The latter half begins as a detective story but pushes its protagonist towards an anguished, deeply personal anger rather than a full investigation. We approach Paul Schrader territory.

Review by Carl Sandell ★★★★

Nice to see a new name keep the Romanian New Wave rolling. A meticulously constructed mystery is entangled with static conversations, preferrably in cars cruising along uneventfully. Puzzle pieces are presented smoothly to keep a narrative momentum, but it's not really the primary concern of the movie. Neither are the usual touches of everyday corruption.

It's mostly just there as a vessel for the religious discourse. And that is an exciting mix of text and blunt subtext. The overarching theme of judgment may be hit or miss, but it's pretty glorious when an aggressively atheist police officer begs a witness to give a sign to confirm his belief in a suspect's guilt. There's also a depressing appeal in debates on…

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VENICE 2021 Orizzonti

Review: Miracle

by  Ştefan Dobroiu

08/09/2021 - VENICE 2021: Bogdan George Apetri offers a rare, gripping Romanian thriller that tells an unpredictable, violent story while commenting on Romanian society

One thing one could say about Romanian cinema is that it didn’t become famous thanks to its thrillers. But once in a while, a Romanian thriller does manage to take the world by surprise, and now it’s the turn of Bogdan George Apetri ’s third feature, Miracle   [ + see also: trailer interview: Bogdan George Apetri film profile ] , currently showing in the Orizzonti sidebar of the Venice Film Festival . Bringing together a nun and an experienced detective, Apetri succeeds in captivating the audience with an unpredictable, violent story while commenting on Romanian society.

It all starts with a crying nun, Cristina ( Ioana Bugarin ). After a mysterious conversation with another nun, she leaves the convent and takes a taxi to the nearby city. A long conversation between her, the taxi driver ( Valeriu Andriuţă ) and another passenger ( Valentin Popescu , who comes back to Venice almost three decades after Dan Piţa’s Hotel de Lux was shown in the main competition, winning a Silver Lion), we learn that Cristina is suffering from a mysterious illness and needs to visit the hospital in the town. When we see her entering the gynaecologist’s office, we understand her crisis. But the story will soon head off in another direction, and the second part of the film will focus on a detective’s ( Emanuel Pârvu ) investigation.

For those fearing that Miracle will be as anticlimactic as some other Romanian films, rest assured: Apetri manages to create a feeling of urgency, of continuous tension, which will only increase throughout the movie before ending with a bang. It is impressive the way in which the director makes the audience aware of the passing of time and of how everything happens against the clock. And as we follow Cristina’s itinerary between the convent and the town, and then we follow the detective back on the same path, Miracle proves to be an impressively balanced piece of work.

Besides Apetri’s screenplay, one of the great strengths of the film is the acting. Bugarin is definitely one of Romania’s most promising young actresses, after her main part in Bogdan Teodor Olteanu’s Mia Misses Her Revenge   [ + see also: trailer interview: Bogdan Theodor Olteanu film profile ] and her pivotal role in Ruxandra Ghiţescu’s Otto the Barbarian   [ + see also: film review interview: Ruxandra Ghiţescu film profile ] . Watching her, we feel the deep crisis that Cristina’s life has slid into, the gigantic contrast between her wish to become a nun and her unwanted pregnancy. But even more impressive is Pârvu (who is also a director, whose second feature, Mikado   [ + see also: film review trailer interview: Emanuel Pârvu film profile ] , will be shown at the San Sebasti án Film Festival later this month).

Aided by some of the best lines written in Romanian cinema this year, Pârvu delivers an impressive performance which may very well win him a Gopo Award for Best Actor in 2022 or 2023, depending on whether Miracle gets released domestically this year or next. His character’s obsession with solving the case makes him take liberties with police due process, which may invite the audience to consider whether there is an ulterior motive to his actions. Nevertheless, his interactions with the other characters (nuns, doctors, various colleagues and the man who is believed to be the culprit) turn into a certain social commentary, creating a conflict between the detective’s straightforward view on reality and the ineffective mix of fatalism, faith and superstition that seems to have permeated the Romanian provinces.

Miracle was produced by The East Company Productions (Romania), and co-produced by Cineart TV Prague (Czech Republic) and Tasse Film (Latvia). Its international sales are handled by Memento International .

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more about: Miracle

Interview: Bogdan George Apetri • Director of Miracle

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VENICE 2021: The writer-director talks about his new film, which explores the trials and tribulations of two very different characters, a nun and a police inspector   

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The Transilvania Trophy goes to Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama

All of the other awards at this year’s edition went to European productions, such as Beautiful Beings , Feature Film About Life and The Night Belongs to Lovers    

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A young nun sneaks out of her monastery to attend an urgent matter but never makes it back and a police detective's investigation into her fate, uncovers clues and revelations that lead not ... Read all A young nun sneaks out of her monastery to attend an urgent matter but never makes it back and a police detective's investigation into her fate, uncovers clues and revelations that lead not only to the truth but a miracle as well. A young nun sneaks out of her monastery to attend an urgent matter but never makes it back and a police detective's investigation into her fate, uncovers clues and revelations that lead not only to the truth but a miracle as well.

• Bogdan George Apetri
• Ioana Bugarin
• Emanuel Parvu
• Cezar Antal
• 9 User reviews
• 25 Critic reviews
• 68 Metascore
• 7 wins & 16 nominations

• Cristina Tofan

• Marius Preda
• agentul Misu Macarie

• Dr. Mihaescu
• Maica Stareta Sebastiana
• Maica Sofia

• Dr. Natalia Marcu

• secretara Lizuca

• Comisar Sef

• agentul Ticu

• Florin Iespas
• Ciprian Bordei
• politistul Bodola
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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User reviews 9

• very long shots that are useless and provide nothing (yes the long shots are very European specific but they do in in certain moments to evoke certain emotions. If you do this for the whole film then it's missing the mark)
• characters complaining about communism/old days/ being poor
• very typical Romanian characters
• that shot that many films have that have some sort of shock value or have to keep you disturbed for some minutes for no reason
• adi_albert_bt
• Feb 17, 2022
• How long is Miracle? Powered by Alexa
• February 4, 2022 (Romania)
• Czech Republic
• Piatra Neamt, Neamt, Romania (main city)
• The East Company Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 58 minutes

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Blue Miracle

• Action/Adventure , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• May 27, 2021
• Jimmy Gonzales as Omar; Dennis Quaid as Wade; Miguel Angel Garcia as Moco; Anthony Gonzalez as Geco; Nathan Arenas as Hollywood; Isaac Arellanes as Wiki; Steve Gutierrez as Tweety; Silverio Palacios as Chato; Fernanda Urrejola as Becca; Raymond Cruz as Hector; Bruce McGill as Wayne Bisbee; Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as Tricia Bisbee

Home Release Date

• Julio Quintana

Distributor

Movie review.

Casa Hogar is an orphanage in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Run by “Papa” Omar and his wife, Becca, the group home helps get homeless youth off the streets.

Unfortunately, in 2014, Omar finds himself (and the orphanage) more than $100,000 in debt. The bank is ready to repossess the property, and the boys living there are once again looking at a bleak future sleeping under bridges and dodging hoodlums with guns.

However, there’s one hope for the boys—the Bisbee Black and Blue.

Known as the Super Bowl of fishing competitions, the Bisbee Black and Blue awards cash prizes in the hundreds of thousands. And after the town was devastated by Hurricane Odile, the $5,000 entrance fee was waived for local fishermen.

Omar doesn’t know anything about fishing, and neither do any of his boys. But Captain Wade does.

Living in his rundown boat on the docks, Wade is the only man who’s ever won the Bisbee two years in a row. But he’s technically not a “local fisherman.” He needs some homegrown teammates to qualify for free entry. And turns out, Casa Hogar might be just the ticket.

He doesn’t care about saving Casa Hogar: He’s more interested in riches and glory. And Omar is hesitant to expose his boys, who he’s trying to instill good moral values in, to someone who clearly doesn’t care about them.

But since neither man has any other options, they’ll have to learn to work together if they want any chance at realizing their dreams.

Positive Elements

Omar attempts to set a good example for the boys living at Casa Hogar, teaching them the importance of doing the right thing even when it’s difficult. Having lost his own father when he was very young, he understands what it’s like living on the streets. He acts as a father figure to the boys, setting them straight when they act out and doing everything he can to keep them safe and prevent them from winding up back on the streets.

When Moco, a boy brought to Omar by police, gets caught stealing, Omar makes the boy return the stolen item and apologize. Throughout the film, Omar tries to make headway with Moco, demonstrating with words and actions what it means to be a good man. And although Moco initially mocks Omar for being a do-gooder, little by little, he starts to learn these lessons as the other boys welcome him into their little family despite his questionable past.

Though Wade is sour to the boys of Casa Hogar at first, he warms up to them, teaching them about fishing and even doing his best to help them win so they can save their orphanage.

Wade repeatedly preaches that every man has a “calling to greatness.” He explains that most men are too scared to take up this calling, using things like their families as an excuse. We learn that he himself allowed his own family to walk away while he chased after his flailing dream. However, the boys of Casa Hogar call him out, telling him that his son doesn’t need him to be a winner; his son needs him to be present .

[ Spoiler Warning ] After winning the Bisbee, Wade donates his portion of the prize money to restoring Casa Hogar, and he goes back to Texas to be with his son.

Spiritual Elements

Omar teaches the boys at Casa Hogar to pray. He tells them that God is always listening; however, he also explains that sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we think He will.

Omar gives Tweety, one of the younger boys at the orphanage, a “miracle” nail, claiming that if Tweety writes his prayers on a piece of paper and then nails them to a door with the nail, God will always hear his prayers. Tweety faithfully follows Omar’s advice, and the movie suggests that the boy’s childlike faith might be rewarded.

During a hurricane, one boy wonders aloud why they are lucky enough to be inside while others are out on the street, and another boy wonders if God actually brought them together so He could kill them all at once.

We see a cross hanging in the orphanage. Omar has a cross tattoo on his back. Wade believes a fishing lure is lucky.

Sexual Content

Omar and Becca kiss. A boy talks about flirting with women. A man mentions his ex-wife.

Violent Content

Omar runs while carrying a boy in his arms after several people get into a fight on the street and start shooting guns at each other. We see flashbacks of Omar running away from thugs when he was a child. We hear that several boys’ fathers and one boy’s brother were shot and killed in the past.

When a police officer brings Omar a kid with a bleeding head wound, Omar asks if the officer hit him, and the man says he “questioned” him.

Two boys tackle each other and fall into the water. Then Wade jumps in to save them since one can’t swim. Several boys show each other their scars, describing stories of abuse (one boy was stabbed in the leg with a rusty screwdriver by his uncle).

[ Spoiler Warning ] Omar has repeating nightmares about drowning. Flashbacks reveal that when he was a child, his father drowned after their rowboat was flipped over.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear one use each of “h—” and “p-ss.” We also hear a few Spanish profanities. God’s name is misused five times, once paired with “d–mit.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Wade starts drinking after a bad day of fishing and Omar and Chato (Wade’s assistant) wonder if he’ll be too hung over the next day to finish the competition. People drink in a bar. We hear that some of Omar’s boys lost their dads to drugs. One of Omar’s old friends offers to hire him as a drug runner for some fast cash.

Other Negative Elements

Omar initially hides the fact that Casa Hogar is $117,000 in debt and ignores calls from the bank. When the boys find out how bad it is, they are frightened of landing back on the street. Some are hurt and feel that Omar lied to them about keeping them safe. Others worry they won’t be tough enough to survive on their own.

Wade admits that he cheated the second time he won the Bisbee, and he tries to coerce Omar into cheating. And even though Omar backs down at the last moment, it’s obvious that Wade had not changed his tune.

We hear that a man accidentally drank urine after someone peed in his coffee mug. Someone steals. People litter. Someone vomits offscreen. We hear that some of the boys’ dads are in prison.

Papa Omar instills the belief in his boys that when we pray, God is always listening even if He doesn’t necessarily answer our prayers the way we think He will. And that’s certainly what happens in Blue Miracle .

Omar never thought that his prayers to save Casa Hogar would result in teaming up a bunch of boys who’ve never been on a boat before with a crusty old fisherman for the world’s most prestigious fishing competition. But that’s exactly what God does.

We hear some heartbreaking tales about why the boys at Casa Hogar are orphans. And Omar and Becca sometimes have to be painfully realistic about the fact that these boys are all alone.

However, Omar also makes it clear that while these kids’ biological parents are no longer around, he is. He and Becca will provide for them, teach them and love them no matter what .

There are a few mild profanities to watch out for, and we see some flashes of violence. But otherwise, Blue Miracle tells a heartwarming true story about what it means to be a father and demonstrates that integrity and good character are the most valuable assets a person can possess.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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Graphic Novels

Neil Gaiman Has a Hero Out of Step in a Book Out of Time

In an era of endlessly safe comic universes, “Miracleman: The Silver Age” goes another way with the return of a godlike hero from a world more like ours.

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By Sam Thielman

Sam Thielman is a reporter and critic based in Brooklyn. In addition to his monthly column for The Times, he has written about comics and graphic novels for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate and The Guardian.

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MIRACLEMAN: THE SILVER AGE , by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham

No contemporary fantasist finds as much texture in the anxiety of children as Neil Gaiman.

Kids understand rules and consequences long before they understand reason and proportion, and Gaiman’s most effective supernatural horrors are unleashed on children as a consequence of some arcane or deliberately unfair rule.

In “Coraline” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” not-quite-comprehensible monsters pursue young protagonists, who seem to suspect that they sort of deserve it. In one story from “The Sandman,” children are brought from the depths of Hell itself back to the boarding school where they died, only to find that their fortunes have not necessarily improved. (That story is now the basis of a new Netflix show, “Dead Boy Detectives.”)

Now, in THE SILVER AGE (Marvel, 216 pp., $24.99) the long-awaited second book of a planned Miracleman trilogy, Gaiman’s lead character is a young man, caught between the terrors of childhood and adulthood, who must reckon with what kind of person he will try to be. The nightmares in “The Silver Age” aren’t as deliberately unknowable as those in Gaiman’s other classics — and it’s to Gaiman’s credit, and the artist Mark Buckingham’s, that the cruel monsters and sweet temptations in the book remain just as evocative and ambiguous.

The resumption and completion of “The Silver Age” is something of an event among the literati (comics phylum). The Miracleman franchise went on an abrupt hiatus in 1993 while two chapters into a planned six. Eclipse Comics, the series’ original American publisher, went bankrupt, and a daunting snarl of contractual problems subsequently presented itself to the book’s rights holders. The story (originally “Marvelman”) was a reboot of a British book from the 1950s, and the untangling process eventually satisfied moral and financial debts to the writers and artists who had dreamed it up. But that process kept the series unfinished — and out of print — for decades. The third chapter (now of seven) came out 29 years later, in December 2022.

Comics were not quite respected as mainstream adult entertainment in the early 1990s — “The Sandman” and several of its sibling series at Karen Berger’s DC Comics imprint, Vertigo, were rare exceptions — and Miracleman was another intriguing outlier.

Under the series’ previous writer, Alan Moore, a Supermanlike hero named Miracleman, who had lived a hardscrabble civilian life as a freelance journalist, abandons his secret identity, deposes world leaders, establishes free universal public services and maintains a benevolent dictatorship alongside his superpowered consort, Miraclewoman (his liaison with Miraclewoman gets our hero dumped by his wife).

The hero’s unchecked rise is challenged only by a much-abused former kid sidekick, Johnny Bates, who embarks on a Boschian rampage before Miracleman finally kills him.

Though in superhero comics, death rarely takes the first time.

Throughout his run with Miracleman, Moore had dealt sensitively with heady themes, especially how power should be wielded, and how cruelty to children affects the adults those children become.

Gaiman, whose work Moore knew well — he had assisted Moore on his and Dave Gibbons’s landmark series “Watchmen” — was a handpicked successor, and he would revisit those themes, circling the core question Moore had posed: Could ultimate power, outside pure fantasy, ever be good?

In Gaiman and Buckingham’s first book, a cycle of interconnected short stories called “The Golden Age,” they prod at the wonderfully solid details Moore offered near the end of his story. Andy Warhol, not long dead in 1993, was said to be living again, resurrected as 18 robots underneath Miracleman’s palace; this was an intriguing enough datum for a full episode, beautifully drawn and collaged by Buckingham using chalk and photostats, and written by Gaiman from Warhol No. 6’s perspective.

In “The Silver Age,” the authors take a harder look at the idea of a benevolent planet-tossing superhero. Another of Miracleman’s former sidekicks, a young man named Dickie Dauntless, is resurrected from the distant past of 1963, and weighs Miracleman’s utopia in the balance of his outdated sensibilities. Our hero is a man out of time in a book out of time: “Miracleman,” oddly adult, oddly conversant with a now-distant era of superhero comics for kids, is back. Is its moment over?

No, thankfully. Or rather, yes, insofar as the corporate appetite for such stories is concerned, but more’s the pity, because the series now speaks not just to the hinterlands of comic fandom but to people who enjoy quippy Marvel flicks and stylishly grim Batman movies, too.

Since the series’ strange hiatus began, Marvel Comics — now the Miracleman publisher — and DC Comics have produced so much mainstream entertainment that their heroes must keep having adventures packed with incident and pathos and dizzyingly high stakes, and those adventures must also be contiguous with those of all the other heroes. There are still beautiful comics about Doctor Strange and The Fantastic Four , but the better they are, the more distant they seem from these shared universes.

It is hard to imagine a realm of toyetic intellectual property that could tolerate Dickie Dauntless. (That’s a compliment.) He is both charmingly naïve and a product of his era in endearing, unfortunate ways. Gaiman had teased his return throughout the original run of “The Golden Age,” and now he and Buckingham shift away from employing multiple narrators as in that story to using Dickie’s perspective, putting us on his side very quickly. We bite our nails as he gapes in wonder at the immodestly dressed women, by 1963 standards, and people of color among the godlike gentry who make up his old chum’s royal court in this new world.

Will Dickie say something ugly or clumsy? Will he lose his mind? Moore suggested that Dickie was gay and closeted; will he embrace the freedom to identify as himself, or will he tragically reject it?

Dickie turns out to be, blessedly, more complicated than that. Gaiman and Buckingham don’t merely add filigrees to Moore and company’s initial, colossal construction; instead, they contend that some problems are inescapable under even ideal circumstances.That thread runs through “The Golden Age,” too: If a god runs the planet, can you get him to bring your dead loved ones back to life? If governments are abolished, what happens to spy agencies? When a couple splits up in a utopia, who gets custody of the kids?

These troubles affect little people who may need to change the world, but, like most of us, can’t. Dickie, by contrast, has plenty of power, but unlike Miracleman, remembers what it’s like to feel helpless.

The heart of “The Silver Age” is a raw chapter about Dickie’s life in an orphanage. Up to this point, Buckingham has treated the reader to beautiful, complex layouts that often stretch across two pages, and a kind of unobtrusively realistic figure drawing that emphasizes his characters’ beauty. Suddenly, Buckingham’s layouts are square and standard, the colorist Jordi Bellaire mimics the Ben Day dots of a predigital comics story, and the people are no longer uniformly beautiful. It is no longer the world that hangs in the balance, but one little boy.

All the sequence’s details make the odd sci-fi heaven that frames it seem suddenly less real by comparison: Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics, unwanted ice cream dripping obscenely onto a boy’s hand, the reverse side of an Edwardian half-crown. These are the indelible images that a child associates with things they want to forget, and never do, and so those bad memories are conspicuous by their absence from children’ fantasies. To confront them is to confront a world outside childhood — and join it.

Miracleman has simply left his humanity behind, declaring himself a god instead. At the end of “The Silver Age,” Miracleman entreats Dickie to “become part of my pantheon.”

Less skeptical writers than Moore and Gaiman declare that superhero media has given us modern gods , and their adventures are our myths. I generally disagree but am forced to admit that for superheroes to fight the same battles for generations without aging or learning anything is a crueler punishment than even Zeus could have dreamed up. Miracleman offers a version of this state of permanent adventure to Dickie, too, should he dislike the idea of apotheosis.

With “The Sandman,” Gaiman was the last person to bring a successful ongoing sorta-superhero series, set among DC’s unwashed masses of licensable gods and hard-working monsters, to a satisfying conclusion. In it and in his Miracleman stories, there is a kind of longing for an exit, both from the imaginative worlds that the characters are outgrowing, and for the readers, who must put aside childish things and begin to know themselves.

Perhaps inevitably, this long-awaited story ends on another cliffhanger: Dickie comes to conclusions about how to address his old friend’s autocracy, but he keeps them to himself. The question, as a fellow super-being puts it neatly at the beginning of the book, is not whether or not authority should be used, but to what end. Dickie, Miracleman and Miraclewoman all have great power, but they have neither real freedom nor Spider-Man-style great responsibility — merely a choice of roles, imposed on them at their most helpless.

“The real difficulty with being a god is which model one follows,” observes Johnny, the former Miracleman sidekick who decided to become a destroyer deity during the series’ previous cycle. “It’s simply not something one is taught in school. One is forced to pick it up as one goes along.”

This, of course, is the problem with being a child, too.

MIRACLEMAN: The Silver Age | Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham | Marvel Universe | 216 pp. | $24.99

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