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.
A young Romanian gendarme, Cristi, tries to find the balance between two apparently opposing parts of his identity: that of a man working in a macho hierarchical environment and that of a closeted gay person who tries to keep his personal life a secret. Cristi is called in for an intervention at a movie theatre, where an ultra-nationalist, homophobic group has interrupted the screening of a queer film. After one of the protesters threatens to out him, Cristi spirals out of control.
The New Year That Never Came is a tragicomedy whose action takes place in a single day, before the revolution of 1989, in which the characters search for normality, safety, love, freedom and meaning in an absurd world.
In a devastating story rife with visual metaphors, Romanian director Mircea Daneliuc traces the slow mental disintegration of a confirmed gambler, using his disorder as an allusion to a greater national and social disorder. Set in the 1930s, the middle-class gambler meets an elderly man who seems to bring him good luck at the gaming tables. Rather than treasure his friendship and the good fortune it brings, the gambler takes advantage of his friend, and by his actions drives the man to suicide. Unable to reconcile his own mental demons, the gambler wanders through the house of his dead friend, and his experiences there only serve to unsettle his mind more and more and more. In the last reels of the film, the fantasies of the hero's deranged mind take over.
Shipped off to a Romanian orphanage to finish his sentence, a British criminal finds romance but also discovers corruption inside the facility.
Young engineer Doru is called to the Prosecutor's Office and questioned on his wife's unlawful ways of making money. Soon he'll learn about her true character and he'll regret having broken up with Livia, a woman who truly loved him.
In the communist Romania of Nicolae Ceausescu, a young Romanian woman marries a German citizen just to leave the country.
Sammy, an agitated agent lost in the forest of the modern world, happens upon a gentle giant with a tall talent for friendship named Max.
During the German and Romanian invasion of Soviet Union in 1941, Italian writer Curzio Malaparte arrives in Iași to treat a severe allergy. Finding himself in a desperate situation, he tries to find a Jewish doctor, but soon discovers evidence of a devastating pogrom against the Jewish community. Seeking help in the midst of a city plunged in terror and confusion, Malaparte begins to uncover the horrors of an oppressive regime, in an atmosphere marked by indifference and hidden secrets.
In the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian Mountains a woman is traveling with a small boy in a horse and cart, looking to punish those who once abused her. For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Órban serves as a living reminder.
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.
Young Romanian Adrian works as a hustler in Zurich's underground in order to get his sister Ioana out of Romania and to Zurich, where they can both have a better future.
A desperate husband chases a bus full of beautiful women headed for Paris, France.
Aymé Pigrenet, a recently widowed farmer, is eager to find a new wife to help him run his farm. Desperate, he seeks the aid of a local matchmaker who suggest that he go to Romania to find a new wife. There he meets Elena.
A man is looking for a singer he had heard on cassette. He finds much more.
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.
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.
Professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Nazis. While on the run, the professor meets a young woman who has her own experience with a lightning storm. Not only does Dominic find love again, but her new abilities hold the key to his research.
Sasha works for a natural gas company. When his wife gives birth 2 months early, Sasha is searching for money to save the premature baby. Despite this, he refuses to take bribes, which threatens his job and leads to friction with his colleagues. His wife doesn't understand him anymore. Faced with a crisis, Sasha receives an order to install a furnace in a church, where he will have to destroy an icon painted on the church wall. Hoping to save the sacred image, Sasha has to corrupt the system.
Doina, a shepherd’s wife in ancient Romania, turns her daily routine into ritual. When nature foretells his death, her journey through grief blends realism, myth, and magic, where despair meets imagination.