criterionforum.org

The debut feature from Cristi Puiu (director of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) is an unnerving, verite-style thriller that reveals the lives of a group of young people living in a country still recovering from years of misrule and neglect.

Seeking a way to finance his own independence Ovidiu agrees to courier a bag of what appear to be pharmaceutical medicines from to Bucharest. Taking his friend Vali and his new girlfriend, Betty along for the ride, their initial high spirits are shattered when a pursuing red jeep attempts to drive them off the road.

They have no idea who's in the jeep or what they want, but a simple trip to Bucharest has suddenly become a life-threatening ordeal...

Part crime thriller, part comedy, part chase movie, part familial drama — the conscious conflation of genres in this dryly funny, political, but deceptively simple road movie quietly reveals the state of contemporary Romanian life.

Second Run present the film fom a brand new HD restoration and also includes Christi Puiu's award-winning 2004 short film Cigarettes and Coffee (Un cartuș de Kent și un pachet de cafea).

"STUFF AND DOUGH had already strongly hinted at his capabilities as an unblinking social observer, a darkly humorous satirist, and a showman capable of whipping up scenes of frazzled intensity from nothing"

"A blend of a buddy road movie and Spielberg's Duel shot a typically rough-and-ready social realist style and tinged with black humour at the grim realities of life... manages to be both exhilarating and mundane; funny and chilling; bleak and hopeful"

"A Hitchcockian road movie about life in post-Ceaușescu Romania... a slender and restrained film, yet this austerity masks a finely tuned script about the difficulties of navigating between corruption and survival when individual aspiration is put above all else"

"A vigorous and engaging debut"

"Watching Stuff and Dough I kept on thinking of Spielberg’s Duel and Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop – there’s something about the deadzone tone of the latter film here. Which in my opinion makes this a must see."

"An engrossing start to the Romanian New Wave is given all of the care and attention we've come to expect from the mighty Second Run label"

"An excellent presentation of this auspicious – and engrossing – debut"

"Stuff and Dough subverts expectations by finding tension and unease in the mundane... filled with a muted by sly wit and a curiosity about human nature.
The director-approved HD transfer looks about as pristine as SD PAL video will allow"

"A hugely impressive first feature - great to have it available... An impeccable transfer"