The Other Irene is an odd event in the current landscape of Romanian cinema. Although paying tribute to the aesthetics of the Romanian New Wave, director Gruzsniczki also embraces thriller genre conventions, delivering a distilled suspenseful tale based on a strange real story. Irina convinces her husband that she needs to go to Egypt to work. Three months later, she comes back as a total stranger only to leave again and to finally come home for good—as a corpse in a coffin. With developing tension, The Other Irene shows us a man becoming increasingly obsessed with trying to solve the mystery of his wife’s death and subsequently becoming frustrated with the runaround he receives at consulates and ministries. Defying bureaucratic obstacles, the man finds himself alone in a Kafkian equation in which the major unknown might be how well we know the person who is closest to us. —Mihai Chirilov