Having suffered as a boy under a brutal Communist-era coach, champion Hungarian gymnast Miklos moves to Canada years later in search of a new start - only to find himself unwittingly perpetuating the very same cycle of abuse among his own pupils.
15 years ago, Luiza decided to make a fresh start in Spain. She left her 3-year-old daughter Cristina in the care of her relatives and took off. When she returns to Romania, the woman learns some shocking truths that were kept hidden from her: Cristina ran away from home, is a drug addict and has a 2-year-old girl who lives in an orphanage. Overwhelmed by guilt, Luiza attempts to save her daughter
In 21st century Bucharest, to go out in the city on Saturday evening on the arm of a beautiful woman is a risky financial investment. Ovidiu, an unassuming high school teacher, never could afford it. Looking for a source of income more substantial than a teacher's salary, Ovidiu plunges into a fabulous world – the beggar mob.
A young journalist interviews a man who was a torturer during the early days of the communist regime in Romania.
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.
While fully enjoying the life of the 70's, in communist Romania, a young man is arrested and accused of a terrible crime. Freed a few years later and deeply affected by his sinister experience, he tries to find out what had really happened.
It's the story of a few men that wonder across Europe trying to come home and rebuild what Mihai Viteazul called "Romanian dream".
All important figures, from police officers to the president commit abuses and fight for rights that normal people doesn't dream.
The life-story confession of a prisoner waiting for his trial. Victor Petrini, a promising intellectual in the 1950s and a lecturer in Philosophy is arrested by the repressive secret police, wrongly accused of espionage, and sentenced to prison and forced labor.
A story of an apolitical police commissar who is using odd methods against the gangsters.
"Revansa" (Revenge) appeared not so long after the preview movie of the series, "Un comisar acuza" (The Police Inspector Calls). In this sequel we meet up with police inspector Tudor Moldovan, once again, who wasn't actually killed and who has returned to put an end to Paraipan's actions once and for all. When Paraipan kidnaps Moldovan's kid, the police inspector makes up his mind to punish Paraipan and his bosses and to finish off the fascist movement, lead by Zavoianu and his allies. Together with the communist that fight to gain power, Moldovan takes out his enemies one by one.
Six widows demand compensation for the death of their husbands, who were killed during a worker's strike. The women are arrested and taken to the police quarters, where the authorities try to make them retract their statements, but it turns out they're not so easily intimidated.
A young boy is adopted by a priest and his wife during the Nazi occupation of Romania during the Second World War. He befriends the village idiot, who's despised by everyone else. When a German is killed in the last days of the war, the village is threatened with total destruction unless the murderer is handed over. The villagers decide to hand over the idiot.
Story of a typical Romanian couple in crisis.
The end of Trajan's Dacian Wars (106 AD), when south western Dacia was transformed into a Roman province: Roman Dacia.
After the revolution of December 1989, Romania is in full transition. Incertainty and chaos have followed Ceausescu's downfall. Fane, a worker in a wharf on the river Danube, is a former dissident who was in involved in politically motivated uprisings. Now that he has achieved what he has fought for, he is unemployed and everything around him seems to fall to pieces. His whole family falls victim to the changes of the early 90s. His daughter prostitutes herself, his elder son ends up in prison and his younger son becomes a thief.
The poet and journalist Ladima commits suicide and his friend, Fred Vasilescu, tries to find out the reasons of those actions. In his search he discovers a mysterious Miss T.
An outdoors orientation contest turns into a journey to the participants' self and conscience.
In 1919 at the end of WW1 Romanian peasant Manolache Preda returns to his native village where he finds his woman taken by another and his land sold to the local landowner.
At an old age, prince Andrei Morudzi retreats to his castle in Romania, during the two world wars, after having lead an eventful youth. There he is seen upon as a rare bird by the local folk, due to his strange attitude towards life and his exquisit manners, which don't fit in the way of life of the villagers. But, in the end, despite trying to distance himself from the local people, he can't but influence their humble existences.
Depicts Romania during World War II, focusing on the Royal Coup that toppled Ion Antonescu, the Axis-allied Conducător and authoritarian Prime Minister. Focused around the August 23rd 1944 coup against Marshal Antonescu, the movie also tackles other topics from the same era such as the Iron Guard rebellion and the execution of political leaders by communists.
Young Doina has a car accident. In intensive care, the doctor, Vali, calls her time of death but discovers that the child she was carrying is still alive. Wishing to save its life, the doctor puts the mother on artificial life support. Just then, Bebe, the supposed father of the unborn child, enters the scene. A former teacher and mountain climber, Bebe will soon fall in love with the doctor...
In 1916, shortly before Romania's entry in World War One Romanian Army Lieutenant Tudor Gheorghiu is posted to a border patrol unit on Romania's border with Austria-Hungary. Not receiving any news from his wife he persuades the commanding officer, Captain Dimiu, to allow him a short leave to visit his wife. Tudor married Lena two years before but was very jealous and suspected her of infidelity. When his grandfather dies Tudor inherits most of the fortune. Gigolo lawyer Andrei Nicolau is the executor of the will. He also is the man who lustfully desires Tudor's beautiful wife. A contest for Lena's love begins. Romania is plunged into WW1 and ironically Tudor receives his junior Lieutenant commission in the same regiment where gigolo lawyer Nicolau serves as a Major. Their destinies seem intertwined.
A group of firefighters discover explosives on an abandoned ship which threatens the local city
Matei recollects events of the year 1944 in order to prove the innocence of a friend. Based on "Șoseaua Nordului" (Northern Highway) novel by Eugen Barbu.
The administrator of a huge apartment block in Bucharest, a former great Communist Party activist, now in disgrace, eliminated from politics and perched at the head of a tenants' association, through methods he used in his former political positions - blackmail and anonymous letters - a sex obsessed man, ends up terrorizing honest people, people who are looking for justice. Will they find it?
Former classmates Dana, Ionica, Geta, and Cosmin face adult challenges: Dana, now a reporter craving thrilling cases, ropes Cosmin into playing detective. Meanwhile, Geta and Ionica’s romance is shattered when Ionica is mistaken for notorious drug trafficker “Blondul” and arrested.
When a huge fire erupts at an oil field in the wilds of the Sahara Desert, an American who specializes in fighting oil-field fires and his team are called in to put it out. As the fire rages out of control, the expert finds that he not only has to battle the fire but greed and political corruption as well.
At the beginning of the 40's, Victor (Gabriel Oseciuc) is a young Communist who has been hiding for months in a built-in room to print out on his own the free newspaper Communist Command.
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...
The story takes place early in the 20th century in Eastern Romania, where a famous outlaw lived kind of a Clyde with many Bonnies legend in the landscape of the Danube Delta.
A woman tries to regain her dignity, both in her personal life and her career, after spending five years in prison, because of a false accusation that she was a saboteur.
Andrei Blaier's film catches the last days of The Stone Cross a low class brothels area that became some kind of an institution in the landscape of Bucharest before the Communist period, doomed to destruction under the new rules of proletarian morals that the Communists were trying to impose. The idea could be the start of a great film, with the prostitution being seen not so much from its destructive and exploitation perspective, but rather as a form of freedom in a time when the whole society was falling under the rule of propaganda, hypocrisy, and repression. In a world due to fall under tyranny for the coming decades prostitution becomes a metaphor of the old more free way of life.
Ioanide, an apolitical and misunderstood artist who dreams of "things that are normal abroad but impossible here", led a difficult life as an architect under the old regime. After 1944, his situation improved thanks to the benevolence of an enlightened communist nicknamed Botticelli, whom he once hid from the police in the attic of his house. He receives commissions for large-scale cultural monuments, although he has "on file" the ballast of his children lost in the legionary adventure and continues to accept, in his entourage, a circle of sycophants from the former elite.
The search for a list of Nazi spies that had been hidden in the house of a widowed noblewoman.
An antiques dealer misses out on some of life's pleasures because of his obsession with doing everything fast.
In 1942, Nea' Vitu is in trouble with his children: a son is fascinated by the world of war profiteers, and the daughter is going around with the speculator "Treispemii" (Dan Nutu). On the evening of her engagement, Vitu is denounced by his son for hiding an illegal printing press in a painter's house. Thirty years later, he returns to the slum and searches for the Vitu family. They no longer live there, the neighbors have changed, and he investigates to find out what happened to them. Nea Vițu, you raise your daughter, Rădița, and son Fănică. His wife Dorina died when Fănică was born. Apparently, family problems are difficult barriers to overcome. He's an honest man. He gets angry at the slick Fănică. Fănică is also chased away by the slum priest, because he wanted to make a new bible... where he'd be Fănică the God .... Rădița goes around with the speculator "Treispemii". In 1942, nea Vițu joins the fight against the Nazis and runs an illegal printing house with a painter...
Young Filip tries to figure out how to live in a world full of compromise and corruption.
In 1936, a time when Bucharest was known as the "Paris of the East", the three Duduleanu sisters, from a family of prosperous merchants, rule their clan with an iron fist. Young journalist Mircea Aldea joins the clan by marrying their daughter, but the union is short-lived.
Nicolae (George Motoi), the intelectual descendant of Moromete family, former communist apparatchik in the 50s, becomes a horticultor due to a political error, and refuses to have any social life, even if he is unhappy with his inactivity. The death of his partner makes him respond to the overtures of his old comrades. Based on the eponymous novel by Marin Preda.
The great King of Dacia, Decebal (Decebalus), is disposed to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to keep the integrity of his people. His own son, Cotyso, is given to the god Zamolxis to the dismay of the King and his daughter Meda. Septimius Severus, a young Roman devoted to his adopted country, must make the choice between his blood origins and the culture he was introduced to.
The director of a hydropower plant has to deal with conflicts between his subordinates, pressure from the majors and complications in his own personal life.
Romania had it rough under its last communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and things are even rougher now. Before, their problems were oppression and poverty. Now, their problem is mostly poverty - and plenty of it. In this grim comedy (to call it a black comedy would be to paint too perky a picture of it), Vasile (Gheorghe Dinica)has a wife whom he's fond of, and a mistress, whom he's fonder of. He manages a nearly abandoned movie theater, and makes just about nothing doing it. When his wife announces she's pregnant, he nearly goes frantic trying to find money to get her an abortion. However, what truly sends him over the edge is when his mistress decides to become a prostitute because, after all, the money is good. These two situations send him straight to the loony bin, and when he gets out, he discovers that his wife has rented their apartment to pornographic filmmakers, and guess who's starring in them?
Ion is the head of workers' team who install high-voltage lines in the mountains. He discovers a design error that could put many lives in jeopardy and knows that the chief designer is Valeria, his ex-girlfriend from adolescent days.
Bad luck and bad judgment follow two generations of men in this Rumanian tragedy, set in the World War II era. Ion (Dan Nutu) seeks to find out why many years ago his father was falsely accused of being a communist, an accusation which led to his execution. He discovers that his father's mistress, now married to a wealthy man, made the accusation for money, as she was deathly afraid of poverty. Ion's own girlfriend seems to be similarly concerned about issues of livelihood, and abandons him for a richer suitor. Frustrated and angry, he burns down these couple's houses and takes up with some anti-communist arms smugglers.
Young Felix moves into his eccentric uncle’s house and is immediately drawn to the enigmatic Otilia, a free-spirited woman who lives by her own rules. Love, inheritance games, decaying mansions, and fragile hearts collide in this elegant adaptation of George Călinescu’s novel Enigma Otiliei.
In 1475 when Stephen the Great, ruler of Moldavia is facing an invading Ottoman army of 120 000 men, the fate of Christian Europe largely depends on the battle's outcome.
This film si about the sabotage of a Nazi fluvial transport on the Danube during WWII.
Historical movie based on the "The Martens Brothers" (Romanian: Frații Jderi) novel. Ionut is the youngest son of Commissar Jder, a trusted man of Stephen the Great. He falls in love with Nasta, the daughter of a boyar, and competes for her affections with Alexăndrel, the ruler's own son. His longing for Nasta gives impetus to Ionuț, who, together with his brothers, puts his life at the service of Moldavia.
The Iron Guard, also known as Legion of Archangel Michael, was a Romanian nationalist and patriotic movement of extreme right; as such, after it rose to power, it supported Nazi Germany and started a fierce campaign of retaliation against its political enemies. As such, in the night of November 26-27, 1940, the Death Teams executed forty political prisoners in the Jilava prison (in the movie, named "Viraga"), and next day, other two Teams arrested and shot the former minister Virgil Madgearu and the world famous historian Nicolae Iorga. To squash down the political outcry, the Police Prefect Stefan Zävoianu conveniently assigns the cases to a commissioner from the "Morals Division" (prostitution, thieves), Tudor Moldovan, hoping that he will fail to get to the bottom of the case. However, Moldovan has communist sympathies, so he quickly comes under the influence of the Bolshevik Pîrvu, who had escaped during the Viraga...
Victor, an incisive journalist, discovers a series of irregularities in a State farming enterprise. His investigations will unmask the fraud committed by the person in charge of the wine section, called Bachus. Although aided by an impressive number of cronies, Bachus will not be able to hide forever infamous secret.
This film is about the changes in the countryside happening in Romania around 1945, when am agrarian reform happens.
A subtile, soft exploration of the relation between love and death.
This is a comedic meta-movie about making a movie on the Romanian seaside. The movie made is about some low level black market traffickers.
A war story. survivors. refugees. few essential meetings. and great actors. a film inspired from Zaharia Stancu short story. about pain, search of sense in misty times, about roots of evil and price of survive, about a country as shadow and ruins of a empire. all in dark nuances, touching images. a movie like a ballad. heavy, strange, profound, harsh, cruel. with few drops of feelings as steps of rotten ladder. looks, silhouettes, way to ambiguous home. a thief and a young man. across Balkans. among ash of a fragile territory. the impressive aspect – silence. and gestures. the woman, the train. the escape. the bath. and the death of Diplomat. all – fragments of an old way to discover reality. all – words of a new world.
In 1950 a Western spy is clandestinely parachuted into Communist Romania to retrieve secret WW2 codes and agent lists and also to assist a group of anti-Communist guerrillas escape but the Communist police is setting a trap.
After 1950, when the comunist regime is fully entrenched, some Bourgeois descendants have to make a living being movie extras. Continuation of "On the Left Bank of the Blue Danube"
A tabloid photographer is given the assignment to follow a politician suspected to have sexual relations with an underage girl.
A Romanian soldier deserts during the March '90 conflict from Tg. Mures. He hides at a cantonment where he starts a love story with the cantoner's girl, against the Hungarian cantoner's adversity.
Mircea Moraru, the owner of a Romanian media giant, gets involved into politics, in order to lower the financial deficit of his company. As the elections draw closer, attention is focused on the suspicions which arose shortly after Moraru stepped into the life of politics, regarding some financial misconducts. Moraru has to resist the siege, lead by two of his former friends and associates, who are trying to take advantage of the situation and remove him from his leading position in the company. This is yet another battle for Moraru, who sticks to his principles, even though they had cost him his family.
Industrial espionage movie, in communist Romania.
A movie about miner strikes in 1292 Jiu Valley. It is made from re-cutting and combining two previous movies, "Lupeni '29" and "Golgota", that were shot much earlier.
The favorite plot for communist propagandists: a new agronomist comes in the village and gets in conflict with the local cooperative president. Everything ends well. Sprinkled with jokes.
Two Romanian soldiers manage to escape from a camp in Tatra mountains, Czechoslovakia.
Three youngsters are sent to "re-education through labor" on a hydro dam construction site. They prove in the end to fare much better than some of their colleagues.
In 1919, young Doctor Poenaru is sent to be the director at a country hospital. On his way there he meets a formar army comrade, now a lawyer. An ideological and philosophical dispute ensues, the two following different paths in life.
In 1970s Romania, Laura, a young architect, becomes pregnant by her married lover, Titel. Desperate and alone, she travels to a remote town for an illegal abortion. There, she meets Irina, a local girl who tries to change her mind. A quiet, devastating portrait of control, shame, and the cost of forbidden choices.
The love of two adolescents for the same girl, in 1944, which is disrupted by the demands of war. From the novel by Titus Popovici.
In 1946, Northern Transylvania, an armed band is annihilated by the local communist organization, which manages to rally the locals on they side.
A police major is investigating a gangster.
Octavian Borcea, a middle aged peasant, goes through a social crisis when he decides to re-marry with a widower. He visits all his 5 children, then he returns in the village, where he burned his bridges.
In the Free Theater (Teatrul Liber) of Bucharest, the actors and crew prepare a new show, with the play "Disguise" ("Travesti"). After the opening night, which is only partly successful, they reach the conclusion that, along the years, they came to the mistake of also disguising this true feelings, becoming hypocrites, and this has a negative effect to their stage performances too.
A woman in a village tries to break up her son and his girlfriend. He asks for help a local cult leader. He tells her to use some specially prepared wine.
A copilot takes control of the aircraft due to the fact that the captain has taken some risky decisions. This will degenerate into an ugly conflict.
In a poverty stricken village in 1947 Moldavia, the obsession for getting rich of Prisac turns the community against him. Based on "La Răzeși" (Yeomans) novel by Valeriu Emil Galan.
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 perspective on the Romanian revolution which started in Timișoara.
In a small provincial town everything goes well, apart from sports activities. The local soccer team is on the verge of relegation. But the ones responsible with the team are ready to do "everything for soccer", even match-fixing.
A young boy becomes callous to the deaths and battles that rage on during World War II. He and his friends follow a peasant soldier of a Rumanian troop as they march to join the Russians in fighting the Nazis. He watches as one of his friends dies after destroying a German machine gun nest. He is slapped by a Rumanian soldier who is livid over the boy's nonchalance of his friend's death. He becomes a mascot of the advancing unit as they proceed to a castle in Czechoslovakia. When the men dress in armor for a group picture, they are killed by the Nazis. The boy returns to find the men have been wiped out and he is taken prisoner by a German soldier. The Nazi falls victim to marauding peasants seeking revenge. They rescue the young warrior and escort him back to his home in Rumania.
Set in the atmosphere of 16th-century Venice, the film recreates, in a modern spirit, the characteristic elements of commedia dell’arte: rhythm, verve, spontaneity, disguises, and comic situations. The traditional characters of this theatrical genre delight audiences with their humor, brought to life by some of the most exceptional names in Romanian comedy.