A description of Romania before Ceausescu's downfall, through the story of Nela. Daughter of a former colonel of the Securitate, the romanian political police. She refused to become like her sister, an agent of this Securitate, and lives with her father. After he died, she leaves Bucharest, and ends up in a little town, where she meets Mitica, a surgeon, another herself, laughing at everything.
At the Bucharest Circus, the new young manager is trying to solve the major financial issues of the company by selling its only bear (old and about to die soon) to German hunters. But the artists do not want to sacrifice their favorite animal so the manager decides to steal the bear and run to the mountains to meet the Germans. A crazy road movie starts following the bear.
Based on true events, The Ladder follows the spiritual journey of Andrei, a sensitive, socially awkward young man who turns to acting in his search for true happiness. After the fall of communism, he is blinded by the illusion of freedom and democracy and faces a series of brutal events that have deeply marked Romania's recent history. Finding comfort in playing the part of Aliosa in a stage adaptation of The Karamazov Brothers, he becomes closer and closer to his character, gradually discovering the way to understanding divinity.
In this light-hearted fantasy, a talented young magician stumbles across an unusual ring and ends up in Camelot before King Arthur. It turns out the ring belongs to none other than Merlin.
Deep in the Transylvanian Alps, the Archangels gold mine is the stage for an epic battle of characters. The arrogant owner is struggling with perceptions of ghosts in the mind of the miners. A maverick free-lance miner is helping him to find the source of terrifying noises that frightened his workers.
He is a silent man. He walks the streets, watching, looking for the right place. He finds it. In the middle of a market. He sets up a stand. But instead of selling his goods, the silent man gives them away for free. The other sellers watch. They feel provoked. The situation escalates. They lose control. But in the end... there is hope.
Alex is an artist shunned by success whose love life is affected by the career rise of his girlfriend, Carmen. Alex is sent to a maximum security penitentiary to stage the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The great Shakespeare with prisoners. In the face of their efforts to overcome his limits, Alex realizes that he is a prisoner in his own life. For their part, the inmates do everything to be selected in the penitentiary theater festival, because each scene has a hatch through which they can escape.
The residents of a retirement home start a football team.
When a political turmoil brings a Romanian prosecutor into the spotlight, she is offered the position of attorney general.
Păcală, a young man without too many expectations from life, is tired of wandering around the world and driven by the longing for his parental home he decides to return to his homeland, from somewhere "outside" - a timeless space located outside the borders of Romania.
It is late in the Ceausescu era in Romania, and Cristina is having a difficult time with her boyfriend. He wants her to have sex with him before he goes off to do his obligatory stint in the army. She wants him to marry her first. She also gets involved with a slightly rebellious actor, a would-be ladies' man. He has some vague plans to defect - could those be the reason he is receiving mysterious phone calls? Or are they the work of his anonymous admirer?
In a shabby apartment somewhere in Romania, a man obsessively zap between his TV channels despite the wife's complaints and nagging. But where his wife fails, a little man inside the TV will appear and tell Sotul a thing or two about the true mechanics of television zapping...
A story about a young boy and his adventurous holidays out of town.
Angela (Liliana Pană) and Dorina (Magda Catone), working at the Match Factory, live in the home and dream of marriage and spouses to give them a decent living. But the illusions are shattered when the men encountered prove their lack of character: Titi (the boy whom Angela is in love with, appears at a time with a kid and is raped), a vendor, is pimp, Emil, an engineer, is a And Radu, an emigrant in Australia, is undistinguished by his Collie dog.
After their marriage, a young couple are astonished to find their privacy invaded by strangers through an absurd order from the Housing Authority. The state institution orders the newlyweds to cede a room in their apartment to an unknown person. And the only solution to use their home as they please is... divorce. But in court battles, divorce takes on dimensions no one expected...
Melania, a 15 years old high school student gets pregnant with Emi, a classmate. Melania does not tell anyone she's pregnant, Not even to Emi, or to her parents. The situation is extremely complicated because Emi's mother is the director of the high school where the two lovers study, and Melania's mother is secretary at the same high school. In the fifth month of pregnancy, Melania faints during class hours. She is urgently taken to the hospital by her mother who finds her daughter is 5 months pregnant so it's too late for an abortion. Melanie's mother is forced to tell the truth to Emi's mother. Emi's mother forces Melania's mother to promise to keep the pregnancy secret to everyone, even to Emi. Minor's mothers separates the two lovers and decide to give the baby up for adoption to a family of Romanians living abroad who don't have the right to legally adopt a child from Romania.
Mitu and Elena get to know each other in the course of a vodka drinking contest and discover that they are both dissatisfied with the status quo. Mitu is about to begin military service and Elena is to be married to a man she does not love. They decide they are meant for each other and plan on a different future, one that is on a collision course with the authorities, and start a mad affair.
Based on a theatrical text by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912), who was a bitter and funny witness of the turn-of-the-20th-century Romanian bourgeois mores, Carnival Scenes manages to preserve and further enhance the slightly hysteric atmosphere of his plays. Pintilie creates a strange combination of carnival scenes which is brought to the screen as a burlesque, fast-paced, screwball comedy with a meditative undertone. This film was banned in Romania for a decade until the death of Ceausescu in 1989 and was only released after the 1989 revolution.
The survivor of a cursed family seeks revenge on the lover who jilted her.
In this very black comedy about ill-suited neighbors united by marriage, Niki is a former colonel in the Romanian army whose daughter is married to the son of Flo, an aging Bohemian who is full of schemes for the “new” Romania. As the young couple prepares to emigrate to the U.S., Niki is obliged to interact with Flo, whom he finds totally unbearable.
Andrei Mladin, a young investigative reporter, is set up for two murders by a criminal that he brought to justice earlier.
Marina, a girl from a stunt team, passively assists to everyone's rush to choose the protagonist without whom the filming cannot begin. After weeks of nothing happening, the director, reviewing the footage on the screen, is struck by the photogenic photo of a young girl in an extras scene, which no one can identify. Marina doesn't want to reveal the secret to those on the set because, more pragmatically, her goal is different: admission to cybernetics!
A collective farm president is deserted by his bride 2 days after the wedding. A comedic radiography of village life.
A young, single engineer divides his time between work and an uneventful schedule at home, where TV is front and center. One rainy evening he is disturbed by a woman's phone call and finds himself drawn into an adventure full of the unexpected.
Calin Surupaceanu is a simple boy, convinced by the engineer Dan to accompany him in building a new city. Along the way, he meets his future wife and subsequently source of unrest and rebellion against fate. The movie is based on a novel by Marin Preda called "The Intruder".
A young prosecutor refuses to take the easy way out of an investigation that involves a young man.
A bunch of comrades with ascending ranks from the same factory go on a illegal arranged hunting trip with a few intended 'romantic' mishaps.
At a party, the class valedictorian gravely injures a passer by with some saucers thrown through the window. Characters are tested by what follows.
During the Romanian revolution in 1989, Pavel and Damian, two undercover officers of the Securitate secret service enter a building to search for shooters. They are followed by an amateur cameraman.
Căpălău, a peasant in a village near Brăila, tries to keep up with the turns of life. Based on "Ningea în Bărăgan” novel by Fănuș Neagu.
A farm team-leader, Tudor, is accused for having failed the harvesting. Unhappy with what he considers an unfair verdict, he leaves the farm and moves to another village, getting a job as an ordinary worker in another farm. At first, he is upset by the very severe leader of that team, Mihai, but soon he discovers that his hard style is necessary to keep the work in good order and face all the problems. He also finds a bunch of great friends (the "Swell Guys" / "...baieti grozavi" in the title) and learns in what had consisted his own past mistakes. —Mihnea Columbeanu
In a forgotten village with lazy people and corrupt leadership, Pacoste must suffer for a mistake made in his past. His only friend is a young boy who finds in him a father figure.
In 1925 Romania, young Marie-Therese Von Debretsy refuses the flirtatious advances of her husband's commanding officer. As a result, the cosmopolitan family is reassigned to a brutally bleak and dangerous outpost on the Bulgarian/Romanian frontier where both their relationship and humanity are severely tested.