Dorel Vișan

Dallas Pashamende

Story of a family. Problems, marriage, taxes, revenge, friendship, army, life and much more.

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 as 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 of everything.

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.

A single mother's struggle to support her child leads her into the surreal netherworld of illegal sexual enterprises, with her finally ending up in the Bibliothèque Pascal; an elegant but bizarre house of prostitution in which men can re-enact sexual scenarios inspired by great works of literature for a hefty fee.

Jacob (Dorel Visan) is a gold miner who risks his life daily to support his wife, mother-in-law, and four children in this socio-political drama. Under the rule of an oppressive monarchy backed by military force, the miners often resort to stealing gold to compensate for their meager wages. Workers are subjected to strip searches and are forced to take laxatives by the often brutal guards and inspectors as they look for stolen gold, and Jacob raises his vocal objections over the treatment of his fellow workers.

One worker in a bankrupt factory finds an unusual solution to save his co-workers from unemployment. If it doesn't work the factory will be privatized and sold to a French company planning to convert the plant into a snail cannery. Only 300 of the 3000 workers will keep their jobs.

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.

Undeva în Est

Under an Eastern European totalitarian regime, a prominent dissident writer survives repression by resuming a submissive sexual relationship with her former lover. After their split-up years ago, he had joined the Secret Police in order just to take her back and provide the protection she needed. Struggling to preserve her humanity, she falls in love with a young platonic dreamer, a kind of rebel without cause, whom she initiate in literature and reinvents as a character capable to meet her own desires of freedom. BEYOND AMERICA is a love story and an action drama altogether, with archetypes of an aggressive, totalitarian society.

"Occident" is a bitter comedy about the people who want to emigrate from Romania, and about those who stay behind. The movie has a rich, interesting structure: there are three different stories - a weeklong in the film - that cross, interconnect and happen in the same period. The characters influence each others lives, sometimes even without knowing. Main characters from one story become secondary characters in another story. At the same time, scenes from the first part of the movie bring unexpected facts when seen the second or the third time. The stories do not have just one ending: the first story ends in each of the third parts in a different point, suggesting radically different solutions for the characters. The way in which the director fits time and links events together often produces thematically unexpected results.

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 movie about the friendship between Ion Creanga and Mihai Eminescu.

This Romanian dramatic comedy offers metaphorical commentary on life after Ceausescu's reign as it tells the story of a rural community turned topsy-turvy in their mad quest for the snails a prominent senator has requested for his dinner. The trouble begins when a rather imposing, pompous senator comes to visit a small rural Romanian town for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new hydro-electric dam. After he finishes his speech, the senator is accosted by a Swiss film crew eager to interview him. The senator is inordinately concerned with presenting a positive image of Romania to the world at large and so when he learns that he and the journalists are to stay at the same villa, does everything he came to make sure that they see nothing scandalous.

An inexperienced prosecutor becomes involved with a local woman while investigating a miner's death.

Ca sa poata trai, batrana Nica (Rodica Tapalaga) isi transforma casa de la tara intr-o "pensiune" anemica, falimentara. Singurele sale bucurii sunt cicalitul cainelui si programul de stiri de la televizor. Din singuratate, ea se inchipuie uneori eroina de telenovela: in secret, Nica este indragostita de prezentatorul de stiri Paul (Mircea Radu). Batrana hotaraste sa faca o calatorie la Bucuresti, unde fiica ei, Tuta (Cecilia Barbora), sora medicala, locuieste impreuna cu concubinul ei, Jenel (Valentin Teodosiu) si cu Marilena (Beatrice Benezi), fiica ei de 15 ani. In capitala, pasiunea sa pentru Paul ia forme paroxistice. Nica acapareaza telecomanda pentru a ramane pe acelasi canal de televiziune pentru care Paul prezinta stirile, ceea ce-i va atrage ironiile familiei. Ajunge chiar sa-l caute pe "cerbisorul" ei la Televiziune, ii scrie, expunandu-se la umilinte si batjocura. Rezista insa pana o doboara boala si rusinea. Totul culmineaza cu tentativa batranei de a se sinucide...

Fresh out of university, agricultural engineer Voica Teodorescu returns to her native village where she joins a local team of engineers in the planning of a dam and an irrigation mega project.Although Voica is engaged to be married to Ilarie she also is romantically attracted to local engineer Radu. Radu doesn't agree with local boss Vasile Axente's management style and deems Vasile incompetent.Therefore, Radu tries to form an alliance with the village vice-mayor Dumitru Vardaru but when a large sum of money from the public works budget goes missing Radu is investigated by authorities for embezzlement of public funds.His relationship with Voica and the villagers gets sourly tested.

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.

Poor Ioanide

This movie retells the story of a revenge that sweeps over the social and political events of the '40s. Because they sent her son to war and he never came back, his tough mother, Ecaterina Handraburu, decides to have her revenge on those who plotted to leave her heirless and grab her possessions.

Set in the period prior to the revolt in Timisoara in December 1989 and mirroring the events that led to the downfall of the dictator Ceausescu. -- BFI

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.

Busuioc (Victor Rebengiuc), un taran bogat din Curtici isi trimite fiul Iorgovan (Adrian Pintea), impreuna cu servitorul Sofron (Serban Ionescu) in satul vecin pentru a gasi oameni la munca campului. Iorgovan este indragostit de Simina (Manuela Harabor), fiica unui taran sarac, dintr-un sat de munte, in cautarea careia pleaca. Cum si Simina ii impartaseste sentimentele ea accepta sa vina la culesul recoltei impreuna cu tatal sau. Sentimentele lui Iorgovan sunt confuze, este slab si sfasiat intre dragostea sincera pentru Simina si obstacolul prejudecatilor si diferentelor de pozitie sociala. In acest timp Sofron, tanarul servitor al acestuia, se indragosteste la randu-i de Simina. Infruntarea dintre cei doi pretendenti devine din ce in ce mai acuta, fapt care va limpezi atitudinea fiecaruia fata de femeia pe care amandoi o iubesc.

The rise and fall of the opportunistic Tănase Scatiu, a boyar in 19th century Wallachia.

Love story of 2 high school students with different social standards, Ioana and Alexandru. They are to form a couple with all the social and familial obstacles encountered.

Pacala is an important hero in Romanian popular tradition. He is always making fun of everything wrong with the human behaviour such as stupidity, greed or vanity. His attitude and actions always bring damages to the mean, evil and materialistic people. So beside the jokes, the movie has this philosophical layer, undoubtedly because Pacala's independent way of being, free spirit and his love for the nature creates a way of seeing life, bringing joy. Filmed in a very beautiful part of Romania in 1974, the movie had an important success at that time and it is considered one of the most loved movies in Romania ever. Like the hero, found in many stories and jokes, the movie forwards the spirit of true freedom and pure link with the nature, forgetting about times and governments.

Irina is married with a sea captain, that is away for the better part of the year. She is missing his company, so she is vulnerable to the advances of another man.

Two young men and a girl, in a triangle that is a symbol of the social life of those times.

A cinema-verite approach to this mystery story about the death of a young girl in a village adds credence to the story itself, it is as though the audience were following along with a real investigation instead of simply watching a narrative unfold. An inspector and his police team arrive to find out why the young girl drowned -- under suspicious circumstances -- and start to work interviewing the villagers. Shown in close-up and individually on the screen, each witness contributes to a growing knowledge that the girl was sexually assaulted and beaten before she died, and the real mystery is why no one reacted to the horror. As the interviews continue, the inspector realizes it will not be easy to extract the whole truth from any of the guarded, close-mouthed villagers.

In late 19th century, a Transylvanian revolutionary fleeing the Imperial authorities goes to Italy where he meets a beautiful soprano who later disappears under mysterious circumstances.

This is a film about love, crime of passion, revenge, happening in the Romanian countryside, late XIX century.

The survivor of a cursed family seeks revenge on the lover who jilted her.

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.

The plot confronts an influential surgeon and a carpenter accused to have stolen the doctor's personal belongings from the beach. The neurotic doctor involves himself in the inquiry, ultimately directing the interrogation. The burglary victim, Theodor Hristea, a surgeon at the peak of his career and social life, self-confident and well connected, his girlfriend, Cristina and their common friend, Stefan - find themselves on holiday near the summer resort of Mamaia. The doctor has a detective passion and accuses – just on account of a physical resemblance with the real thief - a young carpenter who happens to come at the same beach the day following the burglary. The police is summoned and The Kid is sent to trial. The doctor plays an active part in the investigation. Although the doctor's girlfriend and his friend doubt the identity of the accused, the surgeon insists in being right and succeeds in sending the innocent young man to prison.

Obsessed by greed and the fact that his wife is in love with his brother, innkeeper Stavarache heads towards madness. Based on the I.L.Caragiale novel, "In Times of War"

Love story between two engineers in the Bucharest subway system construction site.

A nonconformist engineer challenges some stereotypical negative communist characters.

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.

A collective farm president is deserted by his bride 2 days after the wedding. A comedic radiography of village life.

A metaphor film, in which a group a pupils are going out on a trip. There are various happenings in which adults are interpreting in different ways and give different meanings to everything.

This movie is about the loneliness of an older lady at the end of WWII, in Bucharest. Her mental faculties are declining and she is increasingly living in her own mind.

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.

Ship "Saturn" prepares to return home from the American west coast. The ship is damaged at a very bad time, when a severe storm comes their way, they loose propulsion. The currents are pulling them towards a rocky island and they must try the impossible to save themselves.

A 20 year class reunion, at Snagov, in a villa that belonged to Ceaușescu and now melongs to a media magnate. The reunion is hijacked by a magnatețs son, who makes it into a talk show, in which he humiliates an expat.

A perspective on the Romanian revolution which started in Timișoara.

A moving coming of age story in a time of extreme change: on August 23, 1944 in a small city in Romanian Transylvania, the 16 year old Felix Goldschmidt awaits his classmates for their traditional Exitus Party (school graduation). However, this very day the kingdom of Romania takes leave of its ally of many years - Nazi Germany - thus ending the 800 year old, highly successful story of ethnic German immigration at the feet of the Carpathian Mountains. It is a great story of young people's blindness to the rise of Fascism, the destruction of bourgeois values, a first love and shattered friendships.

A Romanian architect who married abroad reunites with his birthplace, with those he met, with the women he loved, with the echoes of what happened once, with the great transformations that are taking place in the Capitol, on construction sites and in Romanian villages. Condemned by an incurable disease, but also overwhelmed by these realities and by the irrepressible longing for his homeland, the hero decides to return home for good.

A compassionate fiction-documentary about an intelligent but handicapped boy who struggles to stand up against an overprotective father and find his place in the world.

The autopsy of a deceased girl finds that the victim had died long before the accident. Taking over the case, "Grandpa" and his assistant, Panaitescu, discover that the perpetrator of the false accident is being blackmailed.

Communist activists have to let out steam due to increased pressure in their professional life.

Inspired by a true story, the film presents a TV reporter's journalistic investigation into alleged American "flying prisons" in Romania. Through a combination of circumstances, following a mysterious File 631, Dinu (Iosif Paștina) discovers a leak from a NATO base in Romania. The news event stirs, provokes, tempts various media, top politicians, services, both internal and external, causing both hilarious and absurd dramas in a black comedy. The journalistic endeavour of the "newly" turned investigative reporter is a tough, not easy, test to preserve his professional dignity, but also his character, noting the duplicity, the moral volatility, the lack of measure of a world that relentlessly continues its course.

In Communist Romania, an Orthodox priest, ex-political prisoner, becomes the only voice that can be heard in an oppressive silence. His sermons represent a spiritual revolution and a calling towards a national awakening. the hierarchy of the church betrays him and the atheist state send him to prison. father gheorghe calciu dumitreasa becomes the symbol of the resistance in front of the demon with ideological face.

Drăgan Niță is a humble French teacher from Romania that has always dreamt of visiting Paris one day. To make his dream come true, he saves 1 lei every day.

In order to get a promotion, a chemical engineer (Dorel Vișan) uses the researches done by his colleague (Dan Condurache) for his doctoral thesis. But when an important damage takes place in the factory where both of them work, the first one’s incompetence comes out.

A construction site is set up next to a colony of forest workers. Murgu, a worker on the construction site, and Maria, a girl raised by foresters who took care of the colony's household affairs, fall in love with each other.

A parable about honor and true character, inspired by the reality of the 18th century. Constantin Brâncoveanu preferred to be beheaded in Constantinople alongside his four sons - Constantin, Stefan, Radu, and Matei - as well as by his counselor Ianache Vacarescu, instead of renouncing the Christian faith.

When a political turmoil brings a Romanian prosecutor into the spotlight, she is offered the position of attorney general.

Story of a typical Romanian couple in crisis.

"Meșterul Manole" is a Romanian film that premiered on September 29, 1993, inspired by Lucian Blaga's eponymous dramatic work written in 1927. The story follows the life of the legendary master Manole and his team of builders who are hired to construct a monastery in a remote and inaccessible area. As the construction progresses, Manole faces various challenges and obstacles, as well as the pressure to create a durable and beautiful building. As the work progresses, Manole finds himself in the midst of a dilemma: in order to reinforce the construction, he is forced to sacrifice something very dear to him. This act of sacrifice is central to the story and raises profound themes such as art, devotion, and the human limits of sacrifice.

Relu is a family man. He has two children, a wife and a double life. Seen through the eyes of his family, Relu Oncescu appears to be an ordinary taxi driver. No one suspects that Relu works as a collector for Capitanu', a local mobster. Neither of the two worlds (his family and the mafia) knows of the other's existence. Relu manages to keep everything under control, but not for long. After accidentally killing a man, he tries to get out of the underworld, but he can't find his way back. Day by day, the secrets he keeps become increasingly oppressive and the lies begin to surface, one by one.