Eugenia Bosânceanu
Back from a professional trip to Paris, a neurologist at the pinnacle of his career has to pick up his wife so that they can attend a family meal to commemorate his father, who died a year before. At his mother's flat, the guests are waiting for the priest to arrive while arguing about all kinds of things connected and unconnected with the world’s events and wars.
Tales from the Golden Age is composed of 5 unconventional short stories, each one dealing with the late communist period in Romania, told through its urban myths from the perspective of ordinary people. The title of the film refers to the alluded "Golden Age" of the last 15 years of Ceauşescu's regime.
Horace, a 8 years old boy, who still believes in Santa Clause, received as a Christmas gift a day at the mall. What ought to be a normal Christmas day turns into an adventure when Horace loses his mother. He mets John, a pickpocket disguised as Santa Clause, who was in the middle of an illegal operation. Unlike the Santas on TV, John doesn't seem to like children. Althought, the boy is convinced that this is the real Santa Clause and tail of it, causing all sorts of trouble as dangerous, as funny. Finally John finds the magic of Christmas and Horace discovers that miracles indeed, occur.
Two college roommates have 24 hours to make the ultimate choice as they finalize arrangements for a black market abortion.
A young TV reporter would like to shoot a program about a former political prisoner nicknamed The Pharaoh, who spent forty years in Siberian exile. She manages to locate a former lover, his sister, and his onetime cellmate, but questions still remain...
"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.
Based on Nicole Valery-Grossu's European best seller autobiographic novel "Bless you, prison", the film is a true story, with real events and characters. A young intellectual woman, Nicole is arrested. There follow three months of exhausting interrogation and isolation. Alone in a cell, she undergoes a spiritual experience similar to that of the great mystics.
Vampire fledgling Michelle Morgan has escaped the grasp of her master Radu Vladislas. Found by a woman named Ana, she is taken to a hospital where a doctor claims to be able to cure her vampirism. Radu, recovering from the near-death delivered by Michelle and her friends, travels to Bucharest to follow his fledgling. He visits the vampire Ash's stronghold. Ash and his protege Serena plot to destroy Radu and employ the help of the humans, Ana and the Doctor.
Andrei Mladin, a young investigative reporter, is set up for two murders by a criminal that he brought to justice earlier.
Angela (Liliana Pană) and Dorina (Magda Catone), working at the Match Factory, live in the home and dream of marriage and spouses to give them a decent living. But the illusions are shattered when the men encountered prove their lack of character: Titi (the boy whom Angela is in love with, appears at a time with a kid and is raped), a vendor, is pimp, Emil, an engineer, is a And Radu, an emigrant in Australia, is undistinguished by his Collie dog.
In WWI a group of Romanian soldiers from Transylvania desert the german army and consitute a resistance commando group.
At a party, the class valedictorian gravely injures a passer by with some saucers thrown through the window. Characters are tested by what follows.
Romania in the year 1947: two years after the end of the second World War, the King (Mihai of Hohenzollern and Romania) has to leave the country, the communism is knocking at the door, and in these uncertain times, two young people are fighting to get their dream become real artists.
The film describes the journeys through which the members of a light music band pass in their attempt to be selected for the Costinesti Labor Festival.
In 18th century Hapsburg ruled Transilvania the Romanian shepherds from the village of Vlașini face the oppression and injustice of imperial authorities, being forced to flee from their place of birth or pay tribute to the Germans of Hermannstadt for grazing sheep on their own pastures.
In the times when communism was illegal, one young worker is sentenced to the capital punishment for crimes against the state.
Alexandru Lapusneanu is one of important Moldavian rulers. A Macbeth figure, who obtains his throne in fight, who reeves any possible danger out of his way, a good "hospodar", husband and father. His reign is result of relation with the Great Powers of the XVIth century. The strain relation with the boyars (noblemen), the economic and spiritual contribution in the country's development, tensions of his own family, the loss of reign and the revenge, the second reign are elements for define the man and the prince like touching character
This movie is about a person that was convicted in the 50s by the stalinist policy of the times, then released and re-educated at the workplace in 65, as the policy changed.
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.
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.
The movie is set in 18th century Maramureș region of Romania. The Romanian officer Grigore Pintea return to his village and finds out that his parents were killed, and other villagers were tortured because they protested against the unfair treatment of Bartolok Graff. He deserts the Austrian army and he becomes an outlaw. He is joined by many peasants and so his band manages to occupy 2 fortresses.
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.
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.
In 1864, American soldiers massacre a Cheyenne village at Sand Creek. Disgusted by the massacre, Harmonika, one of the soldiers, deserts the army and is captured by the Indians. At first, the Cheyenne hold him responsible for the murder of the wife and the son of their chief Grauer Esel, but soon Harmonika obtains the tribe′s confidence.
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.
The struggle to convince the peasants to join the collective farm in Romania 60s.
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.
Around the nationalization in 1948, a worker's daughter, as a student, is attracted by the social life offered by a breed horse owner. The relationship will sour by the cruelty with which he kills the horses, rather then give them away.
A young man's quest for a kingdom promising eternal youth and immortality. To reach his goal he must fulfill the three wishes of the Emperor's daughter, retrieve three golden objects, answer three riddles set by the Lord of Time, and overcome an evil witch and escape the Kingdom of Lies ruled by an evil Emperor and the young man's nemesis, the Prince of Lies. In return for good deeds along the way, he is given a magical horn and feather to aid him in his quest and is served by a flying horse, All this before he can finally enter the Kingdom of Youth without Old Age and Life without Death and marry the Emperor's daughter.
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.
Pavel has to confron his father in law, who is decided to compromise him in front of the village.
Romania, 1940. A boy meets a girl. They fall in love without suspecting anything about their real identities. They chose an eventful, tense and dangerous life as underground anti-fascists fighters. The significance of their activity is manifest in the consequences it has on the tormented progress of their love. Reality is against it. Two parallel lines which meet for a second, only to drift apart for ever.
In a poverty stricken village in 1947 Moldavia, the obsession for getting rich of Prisac turns the community against him. Based on "La Răzeși" (Yeomans) novel by Valeriu Emil Galan.
An ex-convict struggles to survive by brute force alone in a turn-of-the-century slum in Bucharest. Codine is the thug who served 10 years for murdering a friend. He returns home to his miserly mother, whose penny-pinching ways infuriate her son. A young boy looks up to Codine, and through the man's eyes he sees the economic and social injustices from an adult perspective. When Codine kills another man who violated his trust, his mother becomes more unhinged and paranoid. Thinking her son will steal her hoarded money, she plots to kill her only son. The impressionable child watches in horror and amazement at the cruel machinations of the adult work that surrounds him.
