Ernest Maftei

Petru and Constantin, former faculty mates, have different views concerning their lives and professions; while the former has a bright imagination, is very creative and daring, the latter is looking only for personal comfort and material satisfaction. They contend for the same woman – but even if she loves Petru, she marries Constantin for his material condition. Though he finds in Constantin an adversary who does not hesitate to remove him, Petru will surpass him professionally.

Three children each plan to bring an extraordinary event from their vacation. Their adventures are not necessarily extraordinary, but the children have something to learn from them and they will be left with fond memories.

Lizuca is only six years old, not much older than her pet dachshund Patrocle, when her mother dies and she is left to live with her grandparents on their farm. Before long, Lizuca's father comes to take her away to live with him and his new bride, a vile woman who considers children the bane of all existence. Lizuca and the dachshund escape the wicked stepmother and spend the night in a hollow tree, a tree that changes into an enchanted land where Lizuca (like Alice through the Looking Glass) discovers a world of characters in the form of bees, frogs, the four seasons, Snow White, her dwarves, and other fairy tale creatures. This magic place is threatened by the evil stepmother's plan to sell the grove that protects the secret land to developers -- a decision that puts the woman on trial before this perfidy can be realized.

Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler and Dracula, fights the Ottoman Turks on the battlefield and the Hungarian Boyars in his court.

Fair-Play

An old man and an old woman each have a girl. Influenced by old woaman, the old man compared to banish their home, and it goes in the world. Because of its virtues, she will gain from Holy Friday a box full of riches. Jealous, old woman's daughter and she is looking to get a gift from the Holy Friday, but because of its flaws will only get out of trouble.

During the Second World War, a writer meets two young people, a girl and a boy, who are doing actions to undermine the fascist regime in power.

Im Wald der Feen

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.

An agronomist manages to irrigate and stabilize some sand dunes in southern Romania.

First part of a series of five famous children novels. Adventures of a group of kids in a trip to explore a cave, where they have some surprises.

Desfasurarea

The Gold Diggers

A police officer is investigating the disappearance of a colleague's young boy. His key seems to be the "dark skinned" friend of the boy about whom nobody cares, including the police.

A story about a group of friends and their choices, how to pursue their careers and personal life.

A prosecutor, policemen and teacher bring the students Vuica and Nicu to a restaurant to re-enact their drunken brawl there, and have it filmed to show the effects of alcoholism.

The psychological drama of a mining town in the Apuseni mountains, where the lure of gold acquisition and pathology lead to cruelty, murder and madness.

Michael, the Dog That Sang

The life of Dacian war-leader Burebista who ruled between 80-44 B.C.and founded a strong Dacian Kingdom despite considerable pressure from the neighboring Celtic warlords and the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast.

On New Years Eve, in an isolated mountain chalet, two robbers seek refuge, together with two lost tourists.

It is the story of Danila Prepeleac, a silly, clumsy man that does things backwards. Once he took off for the market wanting to sell a pair of nice healthy bulls. On the way to the market he exchanged the bulls for an empty wallet. But this is only the start of Danila's adventures.

After refusing to compromise at his job, a university professor leaves the city and returns to his native village for the first time in many years.

Margelatu, the feared criminal helps the Romanian resistance to fight the dictatorial authorities.

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.

A propaganda movie about the confrontation between the communists and secret police, legionaires in Romania.

Two dogs and a duck are saving a family.

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.

In 1943 in a Romanian fishing village on the river Danube brothers Pavel and Simion compete for the love of Lia while the war is raging on.

The movie is about the historic moment in which the PNȚ political party has attempted to form a government in exile to counteract the Petru Groza Russian puppet government. Obviously this is seen through the lenses of communist propaganda.

The Convoy

In a mountain village, two kids find a roman fibulae. Trying to find more, they stumble upon the notes of a history professor about a Roman settlement Lisidava. They are trying to locate it.

A young engineer which settled in Bucharest after his studies, returns to his village to spend his sick leave. He takes on a project to moderniza an old mill.

Three young man run in the rain with a borrowed car. The first accident, whose victim is a girl, gives the signal for a race through the city to escape the police crews. Race ends tragically, with another serious incident, even one victim is involved. The only way out is escape. The film shows the psychological transformation of fugitives, in their desperate attempt to evade the consequences and pressures of their conscience.

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.

In Alexandru Tatos’s debut film, a young urologist is assigned to a town hospital with no urology ward and keeps bumping up against his superiors because of both ethical and medical problems.

Păcală se întoarce

The struggle to convince the peasants to join the collective farm in Romania 60s.

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.

Paul Vasiliu, a geologist, returns to his native village. Excavating for irrigation works gives him the opportunity to discover some valuable minerals. Now he has to convince the villagers to postpone theirs lifelong dream of having irrigations in their fields to examine if the mineral deposits are economically viable. A common communist propaganda item of those times.

After years of deplorable conditions of poverty and injustice, peasants revolt against the landowners, the social elite, and police in this routine social drama. A peasant woman is raped by a lecherous wealthy lesbian, and chaos breaks out in the rural areas where the poor suffer the most from the oppressive social and economic conditions.

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.

A continuation of a story started in the drama "With Clean Hands" (1972).

Tudor Vladimirescu fights against the Ottoman Turkish domination of Romania and the social agitation ,his story includes the war between Russia and Turkey from 18o6 to 1812,for which he was decorated by the Russians.

Vying for Principality of Moldavia's throne the descendants of Prince Stephen the Great start a bloody civil war in 1612.

It is 1944, german troops are in retreat. These troops were using a communication station and a cypher. The mission is to acquire the cypher...

The War of the Princesses

A group of young Egyptians are planning to immigrate to the United States from Bucharest. But, when the man they hired steals their money and leave them on the Hungarian border, they are forced to work together to overcome adversity.

This is a communist propaganda movie that follows the life of an engineer who is in conflict with power hungry apparatchiks.

A breathtaking story in which a woman goes in search of her husband.

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.

In the Barza village, people grew accustomed to see doctors leave with the migratory birds. With the new doctor, they will have a surprise...

How a worker family living in a worker neighborhood of between wars Bucharest come involved with the communist movement.

A young engineer arrives for a short time in Bucharest, where he reconnects with the girl that he loves since college. They get married, and she sacrifices her career to follow him to a big project away.

Hot Days

Second of 2 films set during the 18th century in the mountains of Wallachia, about a band of outlaws aiming to undermine the rule of the Phanariots and the Ottomans. The story evolves around the two stepbrothers who lead this band, Sarbu and Amza, with their complex and violent relationship.

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.

Two cooperativists exploit a pond for fish and frogs outside their institutions circuit. Until a youth with socialist expanding ideals comes with the initiative to drain it and use the land for grains. They hatch a plan to make the pond a natural monument, so an expert is summoned, but foolish beliefs betray them.

Rumania's entry in the 1958 Cannes Film Festival was the excessively melodramatic Ciulinii Bărăganului. The title translates as Fools of Bărăgan, in reference to a band of beleaguered feudal Rumanian peasants. But these are no fools: instead, they are fearless freedom fighters, organizing a brave (though foredoomed) revolt against the tyranny of the landowners. The parallels drawn between the people of Bărăgan and Russia's revolutionary leaders are all but impossible to miss. It would have been nice, however, if the story had not been told in such a heavy-handed, spell-it-all-out fashion.

The communists are taking over the boyar land and do the agrarian reform.

A bourgeois family life in Romania around the time of the Great Peasant Uprising of 1907.

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.

The Nazi troops are retreating from Romania. On a wester town, they have to be held back until some strategic trains can leave the train station.

In WWI a group of Romanian soldiers from Transylvania desert the german army and consitute a resistance commando group.

First of 2 films set during the 18th century in the mountains of Wallachia, about a band of outlaws aiming to undermine the rule of the Phanariots and the Ottomans. The story evolves around the two stepbrothers who lead this band, Sarbu and Amza, with their complex and violent relationship.

In 19th century Wallachia war-bands of Ottoman Turks from across the Danube river raid Wallachia with impunity while Wallachia's Phanariote rulers don't oppose them.

Historical movie based on the "The Martens Brothers" (Romanian: Frații Jderi) novel. The movie is in the top 20 most watched Romanian movies.

At the end of the 16th century, Wallachia's ruler Michael the Brave dreams of uniting the kingdoms of Wallachia,Transylvania and Moldavia into a single country known as The United Principalities.

In 1877 during the Russo-Turkish war the Kingdom of Romania joins the war on Russia's side and declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.