Sinisa Dragin's "The Forest" film presented in national premiere

"The Forest" documentary, by Sinisa Dragin, is a film "about how art can influence politics," said journalist and film critic Cristian Tudor Popescu on Thursday evening at Studio Cinema, where the first national screening of the production took place.

"The Forest" Serbian-Romanian co-production starts from a real event: in 1947, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito visited Romania for the first time. Its communist regime gave him, as a present, a painting from a great Romanian artist Ion Andeescu: "The Leafless Forest".

"It is a very good, very rare film," Cristian Tudor Popescu said, adding that, in terms of style, in "The Forest" production there is "a combination that usually doesn't work" ? the journalistic demarche and the poetic dimension.

He said that the story of "The Forest" is told in the manner of a reportage, "as it used to be done."

In the film critic's opinion, "The Forest" presents "an idea as utopian and as proud ? art can influence politics." "A great political rupture could emerge from the obsession of an art critic for a painting," he added.

Sinisa Dragin's documentary, including archive images from Yugoslavia and Romania during the Cold War, has at the focus art critic Radu Bogdan, who published a great number of volumes on Andreescu's work.

Present at the premiere, academician Razvan Theodorescu appreciated that Dragin's film is "about an unknown hero" ? the Romanian art critic who had the courage to conduct an entire investigation regarding Andreescu's painting which became a gift with diplomatic connotations ? "The Leafless Forest".

"The Forest" film was awarded in Visions du Reel International Cinema Festival, in the International Film Festival of Sarajevo and by the Romanian Filmmakers Union...