Romania – Cinéma Elvire Popesco (Bucharest)

Cinema Elvire Popesco is the venue of the Institut Français in Romania and a member of the Europa Cinemas network. With one screen and 183 seats, Cinema Elvire Popesco has managed to be the most attended single screen venue in Romania in 2018 and 2019. It aims to be a committed cinema in all ways possible: an art house cinema showing carefully selected European and auteur cinema, a cultural venue hosting a diverse range of film festivals taking place in Bucharest, while keeping slots for young audience screenings in the mornings and consciously supporting the film industry in Romania.

Over the years we have build a large and active online fan base but we also continue to have a printed brochure every second week that promotes our programming. Our aim is to sustain and grow an audience that returns to the cinema regularly, and our 5-tickets booklets proved to be a good instrument, ensuring affordable pricing and other advantages for frequent customers or for groups of friends who like to watch movies together.

Another important feature is consistency in our programming. Families know that there is something screened for them every morning over the weekend. Movie buffs know that we feature up to 5-6 titles every week, so they can return several times over the same week and still discover something new. We make sure to host professional conferences and help Romanian filmmakers with their test screenings, so that they like to return and meet the audience at Elvire Popesco. Local productions are always shown with English subtitles, this way the expats living in Bucharest have the opportunity to discover Romanian cinema. And even during the very difficult year of 2020, as soon as outdoor screenings were permitted by the autorities, Cinema Elvire Popesco was the first cinema in Bucarest to reopen, proposing a movie screening every evening in its courtyard, over the summer months.