Mimi Brănescu
Ducu is a a 45-year-old Romanian writer facing a midlife crisis. He leaves Bucharest to be part of a creative residence in Berlin and in an attempt to rebuild his life. He swings between two countries and two women: Andra, his hot-tempered wife, who wants a divorce, and Giulia, Ducu's love from his youth, who lives in an eco-village in Germany - Lebensdorf. Looking for an answer, he goes through a series of strange, funny and even eye-opening events.
Adrian, a man from a provincial town, has decided to start a new life as a monk. The mayor, the policeman and the leader of the Christian Youth Association accompany their friend on his way to the monastery.
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.
Alex's birthday is approaching, and his father Calin has prepared a very special surprise: the first night with a girl. The cast includes young actors Alfredo Minea and Cristiana Luca, along with reknown actors Mimi Brănescu and Elvira Deatcu.
Stelios Dimitrakopoulos has 32 hours left before he loses everything. From the jazz bar he painstakingly keeps running for years, to his own family. The Romanian gangster who lent him money, now demands the debt to be paid. The middle-man and former friend, makes Stelios take care of illegal errands. His wife is seriously thinking of abandoning him, and a night club owner, not thinking about the consequences, finally starts to stand up for himself. Christmas is coming, the clock is ticking, and the tree in Stelios' house must be decorated.
Near by Christmas, in an old and charming town in Transylvania, Sebastian and Aprilia start a beautiful love story. However, nothing is as simple as it would seem. Being influenced by three men with strong personalities, Aprilia needs to find the balance between adulthood and the choices of a young girl's heart. It's Christmas time and life holds for this talented beautiful girl only the presents that she is strong enough to grab.
Robert is a young writer passing through a difficult time in his life. He decides to return home into his native village for the first time since his mother passed away three years ago. In more than 10 years, he paid only few visits to his parents and this fact is reflected by the distant relationship Robert has with his father. As it happens, he meets two former classmates: Petrica - his old best friend, now married with children and Paula- his teenage sweetheart. She is divorced after an unhappy marriage and is now working at a local store. She doesn’t seem to be engaged in a relationship…
Child's Pose is a contemporary drama focusing on the relationship between a mother and her 32-year-old son. After the accidental killing of a boy in a car crash, the mother tries to prevent her son being charged for the death, and she refuses to accept that her son is a grown-up man.
In a small village close to the mountains, Mariana and Puiu are a young family with two children: Carmen and Mircea. One morning, the mother and the ten year-old daughter leave for Bucharest, having a hospital as their destination. One doctor alone, Sitaru, believes that Carmen, who can no longer smile, stands any chances at survival. He believes he can perform a miracle and save Carmen's life. Struggling for her daughter, abandoned by almost everybody she trusted, Mariana discovers she is pregnant. After dr. Sitaru operates on the little girl, in a risky manner, Carmen begins to feel increasingly worse. Without any hope, Mariana leaves the hospital and rushes to take Carmen home: while one life ends, another one begins to flicker.
American professor Robert Traum embarks on an adventurous and amusing journey through Bucovina to find Sami the projectionist, the only person alive that can tell him anything about his Romanian Jewish descent. His symbolic journey is filled with danger, the unknown and the surreal, but finally rewarded with a double love: on the one hand he finds romantic love, on the other the passion for old cinema, nomad, popular, naive and generous.
It's not just any day at the factory for our shady but somehow admirable hero Iulica (Gabriel Spahiu), Health and Safety Chief, but the morning after the glorious victory of underdogs Steaua Bucharest in the European Champions Cup over the mighty Barcelona - the only Romanian team ever to win it. Everyone, or at least the men, really wants to be celebrating this, but in fact it's Romanian Communist Party Day which is taking centre stage in the works canteen.
Paul Hanganu loves two women. Adriana his wife and the mother of their daughter, the woman with whom he's shared the thrills of the past ten years, and Raluca the woman who has made him redefine himself. He has to leave one of them before Christmas.
Accidentally receiving a Romanian Medal of Honor, a 75-years-old retiree uses it to regain respect from his family.
On his spring break at the seaside, with his wife and his four year old son, Bogdan Ciocazanu runs into his best friends from high-school at the precise date and time that reminds all of them of their most glorious drinking trips and sexual escapades of their younger days. Frustrated that, between his job and his family, time is no longer his to manage and play with, Boogie now takes his shock dosage of freedom and spends a night to tick off all the items on the map of his youth (drinking, games, flirting, prostitutes). In the morning, after the disillusionment of the remake he experiences with his former friends, he returns to his wife.
3 separate stories take place over two days. The characters' paths intersect, and they affect each-other unintentionally.
Stefan is a young manager in a big advertising agency, happily married and having a young daughter. He suddenly falls in love with a woman he sees on the street, at a light stop. His life changes completely as he is desperately trying to find the woman of his dreams. —Cristina Oprescu
Out of enthusiasm, a Militia soldier abandons his platoon and decides to fight for the cause of the Revolution. His Lieutenant and the rest of the crew look for him during the confused night of 22-23 December 1989.
Mr. Lazarescu is a retired Romanian engineer, spending his time in the company of his cats and booze. When he starts feeling unusually ill, he first seeks painkillers from his neighbors. It soon becomes apparent that Lazarescu is indeed sick, and an ambulance arrives with a nurse who has a few ideas about what could be the problem. However, a major traffic accident and poor organization leaves little room in Romanian hospitals for the fading Lazarescu.
The father, fired two years before retirement, wants to get rehired, requiring the support of his son. The action takes place in a restaurant in Bucharest.
A meticulous ambulance driver working in poverty-stricken Bucharest, who takes part in an armed robbery together with three men he barely knows. As the robbery ends in disaster, Bogdan starts a thorough, almost compulsive investigation to dig up the true identities of his accomplices, but the more he discovers, the deeper he sinks into a spiral of fear and paranoia.
