Actress Catrinel Dumitrescu, known for her roles in film and theater, will receive the excellence award at the Closing Gala of the 23rd edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (June 14-24, 2024, Cluj-Napoca).
Catrinel Dumitrescu will also attend a special screening of the film Căsătorie cu repetiție (dir. Virgil Calotescu, 1985), which will take place on Saturday, June 22, from 5:00 p.m. at Cinema ARTA.
"There were times when one kept painfully silent, in hopes that a cry would one day spring from this silence. Buletin caused a roar of laughter. Mr. Cotescu said at one point ‘It's the best comedy script I've read.’ It was medicine in a teaspoon of honey," Catrinel Dumitrescu once said about the film role that cemented her fame. It's her part in Buletin de București (dir. Virgil Calotescu, 1983), where she plays a recent university graduate who tries to get herself a Bucharest ID card, in order to stay in the capital city.
But this role did not come out of nowhere. Catrinel Dumitrescu was first noticed in high school, when she was a member of an amateur theater troupe, by director Alexandru Tocilescu, who cast her in Svanevit by August Strindberg, at the "Maria Filotti" Theater in Brăila. Then, she was admitted on her first attempt into the acting department of the "IL Caragiale" Theater and Cinematographic Art Institute, in Octavian Cotescu’s class. She acted on stages in Buzău, Sibiu, Turda, and between 1979 and 1989 at the "Lucian Blaga" National Theater in Cluj-Napoca. Since 1990, she has been employed at the Nottara Theater, and in 2002 she received the National Order of Merit, with the rank of Knight, for her devotion and artistic grace in the service of the Romanian theater.
Together with her husband, the late actor Emil Hossu, for ten years she performed in a show that proved to be an immense audience success: Doi pe o bancă by Aleksandr Ghelman.
In film, Catrinel Dumitrescu was Laura, the teacher's eldest daughter, in Blestemul pământului – blestemul iubirii (1980), Mircea Mureșan's screenplay adaptation of the novel "Ion" by Liviu Rebreanu. Nicolae Corjos (the author of the famous Liceenii series) cast her in two films: Ora zero (1979) și Pădureanebună (1982). However, success came with Buletin de București, a hit that brought more than 3,800,000 spectators to cinemas all over Romania. She alsostarred in the sequel Căsătorie cu repetiție, a comedy în which she shared the screen with Mircea Diaconu, Draga Olteanu-Matei, Octavian Cotescu and Mitică Popescu. Separated after a marriage of convenience, taxi driver Radu (Mircea Diaconu) and agricultural engineer Silvia (Catrinel Dumitrescu) meet again in Bolintin, where they have both been assigned to work. Meanwhile, Radu has graduated from the evening courses of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. The untimely arrival of the girl's relatives causes a formal reconciliation between the two, which turns into a definitive reconciliation.
Her acting credits also include titles such as Râul care urcă muntele (dir. Cristiana Nicolae, 1977), Omul care ne trebuie (dir. Manole Marcus, 1979), and Pădurea de fagi (dir. Cristina Nichituș, 1986)
Catrinel Dumitrescu's most important post-1990 film role is in Aurora (dir. Cristi Puiu, 2012), for which the actress was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Gopo awards.
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