Cristi Puiu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈkristi ˈpuju]; born 3 April 1967; Bucharest) is a Romanian film director and screenwriter. With Anca Puiu and Alex Munteanu, in 2004 he founded a cinema production company, naming it Mandragora. Cristian Emilian Puiu was born to Iuliana and Emilian Puiu in Bucharest, Romania. Puiu's first interest in art was painting. In 1992, he was admitted as a student to the Painting Department of École Supérieure d'Arts Visuels in Geneva. After the first year he switched to film studies at the same school, where he graduated in 1996. He started working in film after his return to Romania. Cristi Puiu's debut as a director was in 2001 with the low-budget road movie Stuff and Dough (Marfa și banii), starring Alexandru Papadopol and Dragoș Bucur. The film received several awards in international film festivals and competed in the Quinzaines des Realisateurs section of the Cannes Film Festival. Some critics say that this is the film that started the Romanian New Wave in cinema. He continued with a short film, Cigarettes and Coffee (Un cartuş de Kent și un pachet de cafea) (2004), which was awarded the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival. His second feature film, The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (Moartea domnului Lăzărescu) (2005), was a dark comedy about an ailing old man who is carried by an ambulance from hospital to hospital all night long, as doctors refuse to treat him and send him away. The film was a critical success, being awarded the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and numerous awards at other international film festivals. In 2006 this film gained 47 prizes, several nominations in the American Critics' Top 10 lists and in French magazines such as Telerama and Les Inrockuptibles.