Baloane de curcubeu

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.

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.

Women and men in the middle of the night, without their own clothes, without personal papers and money, without their car keys and mobile phones. In a deserted city the only solution would be, regardless of how far home is, to walk alone all the way there.

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.

The film shows the catastrophic floods in Romania in 1970.