“One of the year's most unexpected and delightful surprises was never meant to be seen by an audience. Three Exercises in Interpretation grew out of an intensive three-week acting workshop conducted in Toulouse in 2011 by acclaimed Romanian directors Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Aurora) under the auspices of Les Chantiers Nomades, a French centre for artistic research in performing arts and the cinema. Reconfiguring Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s Three Conversations and A Short Story about the Antichrist into a contemporary idiom, Puiu encouraged his actors to extemporize while ensuring the original sense of the text. The result is deeply intelligent, wryly amusing and compulsively watchable cinematic treatise worthy of Éric Rohmer. . . . Puiu is one of today’s most visionary filmmakers, and it’s no wonder that he succeeds in transforming this seemingly simple exercise into a manifesto—one that not only suggests alternate ways to make art, but new ways to grapple with the uncertainty that rules our lives.” – Andréa Picard, Toronto International Film Festival