As only 12 domestic films were released in Romanian cinemas in 2020, with some features favouring alternative releases and others – for example, Cristi Puiu’s Berlinale-awarded Malmkrog [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Cristi Puiu
scheda film] – waiting for clearer exhibition skies, one would have expected a very dramatic plunge in terms of earnings and admissions for domestic features in 2020. Admissions did indeed decrease by 23%, down from 785,957 in 2019, but it could have been much, much worse: remove only one title from the list of releases, and this drop would have been as steep as 94%.

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The saviour of the Romanian domestic box office in 2020 was Jesús del Cerro’s Miami Bici [+leggi anche:
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To better assess the popularity of this comedy, during the period between 2011 and 2020, there were only five other features at the general box office with better figures, and they all, of course, were big studio blockbusters, such as Avengers: Endgame, Frozen II and Aquaman. Even if Miami Bici was widely panned by critics (and even cinemagoers’ reactions were less than laudatory towards its qualities), this comedy about two poor Romanians (Matei Dima and Codin Maticiuc) trying to make it big in the United States took advantage of both the traditionally poor February release slate and the increasing anxiety regarding the pandemic to persuade Romanians to flock to the cinemas to watch it and have a bit of fun.

Besides the success of Miami Bici, the situation was absolutely dire: the 11 other Romanian titles released in 2020 garnered a total of less than 47,000 admissions, according to data made public by the country’s most popular film website, Cinemagia.ro. Alexander Nanau's documentary Collective [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (2,491).