The life of human beings, seen from birth to old age. Only that this generic life is not represented with humans, but with the artefacts that we the humans have created for our children (or should we say ‘cubs’?), in order to prepare them for life: the toys. So, the film is a collage of scenes in which the toys help us understand better a possible essence of our life.
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.
After he fails to be accepted in college, Vali is questioned by police for participating in various thefts. He needs an alibi and he thinks the best one would be his father in Bucharest. To get there, he steals a motorcycle. In Bucharest he meets store clerk Anișoara, and he invites her to a seaside escapade. Their one day of love and future optimism is ended abruptly by a tragic motorcycle accident.
On Christmas Eve, a taxi driver takes home a man returning from working abroad.
Invited by the goEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden (Germany), Radu Jude created a self-portrait. A confinement diary made of his thoughts, his relationship to cinema, his inspirations or the streets, objects and people that surround him.
On a rainy day, two guys arrive in a small village with film and a projector in their car. No one from the village comes to meet them. What happened? Who are they? The not knowing relays no small amount of interest at times through tension as in a horror movie, and at times through compassionate laughter.
Two peasants from Transylvania go to America in order to meet their brother who had left Romania ten years earlier. They meet a prophet in the American state of Utah and eventually help the cause of justice in the villages where the prophet proves to be a dictator and exploiter of the coal miners over there.
Soare is a musician with too little inspiration and too many neurons baked from smoking weed. One day, he decides that his life has become too chaotic, so he begins writing a guide for surviving the moments when his reality stops making sense. Passing various surreal episodes, Soare hopes to regain his inspiration.
Three sisters that had a tranquil life in a town suffer dramatic life changes at the end of WW2.
Seeking shelter in her work from the pain of a breakup, Lena, a painter turning 40, is commissioned to decorate a brutalist luxury hotel nestled in the depths of the Romanian forest. There, where the Danube ends its course in seemingly miraculous springs, Lena’s moral views are confronted with an overwhelmingly corrupted community.
Matilda takes a one-day release from jail to attend her mother’s funeral, with no intention of returning. The clock is ticking as Matilda tries one last time to get help from her family and is forced to confront her troubled past.
Following a TV News which announce the landing of aliens in Romania, Eugen (9) steals a camera from the shop where his father works as a guard and starts filming his everyday life and then disappears. When he is found, the little boy's footage is misinterpreted by the media.
Damian works in a supermarket. In secret, however, he has a different job.
Two brothers, trying to make sense of a world gripped by a pandemic, grasp at anything to increase their chances of survival.
Veronica (Lulu Mihăescu) is a flighty girl who lives in an orphanage. At the age of 5, a fairy godmother gives her a charmed bag, which can fulfill every wish.
Panoramic life of a Moldovan village in the second half of the twentieth century.
Two of the employees of the Security Service ring the bell of an apartment and ask for permission to fix a supervision post during a Summit. Neluta, the woman who opened the door agreed them to fix the device and barged in the house with a completely equipped Sniper. The Sniper in charge with the mission in this area meets the owner of the apartment, an Old palsied Lady who firmly asks: "Shoot me".
It's Maxim's birthday. He's 8 years old. He lives together only with his mother in a village not so close to the big city. For his birthday, his mother will take him to Bucharest, to McDonald's. There, Maxim hopes to meet his father.
Teenager Mihai decides one night to pay a visit to Cristina, one of his classmates that he is madly in love with. On the way, he goes through a series of adventures that change him irreversibly.
He wanted to become Someone, and he became somebody else.
