Romanian movies

Set in early 19th century Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.

Cristian, an idealistic young prosecutor whose career is on the rise, tries to open a case against an elderly colleague accused of corruption.

Night Falls in India tells the story of Ricardo (Juan Diego) and Dana (Clara Voda). Ricardo decides to travel overland to India, as he used to do in the old days, when he brought hippies to the East with his van, crossing Europe, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. But the situation is very different now. Ricardo has been in a wheelchair for the last ten years, suffering from a degenerative disease now in its final stage. He wants to die on the banks of the Ganges River and meet Gadhali again. In this journey, he is accompanied by Dana, his Romanian housekeeper. Life owes something to these two lonely beings. The journey will become the alibi for paying it off. Night Falls in India is a shining road-movie full of life that uses journey as an excuse to tell a story about love and the passing of time, about the importance of the present and the need to recover lost time; a story in which the journey itself is as important as the arrival.

A first hand account of one of the biggest cases of human trafficking during the Cold War. A story of greed, courage, hope and remorse.

"Somewhere in Palilula" tells the story of Serafim, a fresh graduate of a medical school, in 60's Romania. He is brought by destiny to the strange town of Palilula. Nowhere, that is. Palilula is a ghost town, lost in the middle of the Wallachia. A quarantine area, a sanatorium, an improbable hospital, a gynecological clinic in a settlement where no child is born. A small community of fools, lazies, sluts, vagabonds with angel's hearts is living under the sun in a sweet innocent unconsciousness. A community of Romanians who forgot their language, but not the nostalgia of their traditional music. Romanians with Danubian taste and disorientation. The young doctor Serafim will not get to practice his profession in this childless town. He will be drowning in the sweet and poisoned honey of the place, like a fly caught by a frog.

When a flood strikes Costache's village in Romania, his wife Maria and all of their possessions are swept away. Now in a village shelter, Costache refuses to sell his land and move onward. He has plans to re-build and refuses help and advice from his neighbors. The village is all he has left, except for an estranged son now living in Tokyo. But when his son Ticu hears of his mother's death and father's plight, he arrives unexpectedly with his Japanese wife and son to bring Costache back home with him. This will not be simple. Ticu fled Romania with many issues left unresolved, the biggest being his relationship with his father. Now there is a whole new family for Costache to deal with, old scores to settle, and painful goodbyes to say.

A former political police agent that has left communist Romania decades ago in search of freedom has to go back to find it.

Two hit men wait for their next target in an empty apartment. The hours go by. Little by little, they start losing their patience and their temper. Pretty soon, they may even lose their lives. Killing time can be a deadly affair.

The events of RENOVARE revolve around three personal stories: Besides her daily work, mother Doina tries to manage the renovation of the family's apartment. Her son Alex can hardly find any time for both the renovation and his girlfriend as the deadline for his Master's thesis comes close. His grandmother Flori insists to help the family although her support is not always welcome.

Yasmine, Roxi and Ana run away to the seaside two days before their finals to have the time of their lives.

In a small isolated village, in 1953, a wedding is interrupted by the news about the death of Stalin. Because any public celebration is forbidden, they decide to turn the happy event into a silent wedding.

Living in Danube Delta Magdalena receives a letter from France. Together with her son, Nae, she embarks on a journey to encounter her brother.

Love Building is a camp designed to mend broken relationships. 14 couples in the program have 7 days to re-design their love lives. But the 3 trainers meant to assist them have problems of their own and things gradually get out of hand.

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.

In a forgotten village with lazy people and corrupt leadership, Pacoste must suffer for a mistake made in his past. His only friend is a young boy who finds in him a father figure.

Under an Eastern European totalitarian regime, a prominent dissident writer survives repression by resuming a submissive sexual relationship with her former lover. After their split-up years ago, he had joined the Secret Police in order just to take her back and provide the protection she needed. Struggling to preserve her humanity, she falls in love with a young platonic dreamer, a kind of rebel without cause, whom she initiate in literature and reinvents as a character capable to meet her own desires of freedom. BEYOND AMERICA is a love story and an action drama altogether, with archetypes of an aggressive, totalitarian society. The story fallows the pattern of a modern fairy tale based upon the classic myth of Pygmalion and Galathea with reversed roles. The year is 1957. In her last fairy tales book BEYOND AMERICA, the hauntingly beautiful dissident writer MILENA tells the story of a sailor who committed suicide, after he had been incriminated with intention of fleeing to America and was to be put in jail. The subversive volume is confiscated from bookstores by the Secret Police. Vicious colonel MARCUS charges Milena with trying to corrupt the readers' mind to commit suicide in order to escape the nightmare of the dictatorship. As a punishment, she is deprived of her writer status and ordered to work at a remote re-education camp. She either accepts to be a construction worker (a mason), or she is to be imprisoned for parasitism. To avoid the camp's misery and humiliation, Milena tries to get help from IAN, her former lover. Ian is a French language teacher and a school principal. She used to know him as a tough guy, crazy enough to hire her. But she doesn't know that after her leaving him two years ago, Ian has got some mysterious connections to Bureau nr. 1 of the regime (The Supreme Leader). On this basis, Ian defies the Secret Police's orders, and hires Milena "to reeducate" her as a literature teacher. In exchange, they resume their intimate relationship. Encouraged by her actors-friends, amidst whom the peculiar EDGAR stands out, Milena begins to clandestinely translate her book into English. Edgar promises her to smuggle it out to AUGUSTIN, the leader of the Romanian Exile in Paris. While teaching her students poems like "Have no hope, and have no fear", Milena has an eye for MANU - nicknamed Castle builder -, a young rebellious mason working at the Congress Center construction site neighboring the school. Here there is STAN, an womanizer supervisor, who is after Milena too. Manu is a fervent admirer of her books. His rough, genuine attitude catches Milena's interest. Although he obviously doesn't belong to Milena's milieu, he is in hopeless love with her; so he splits up with MARIA, his current girlfriend, and tries to capture Milena's attention by attempting a fake suicide, mirroring the suicide of the sailor in her book. As a consequence, Milena is arrested and charged with instigation to political sabotage, since the Congress Center construction site was being an important political site of the regime. In the Secret Police interrogation cell, colonel Marcus tries to force her to sign a paper stating that the sailor killed himself not because he couldn't flee to America, but because his girlfriend had been previously raped by other sailors - which Milena refuses. Knowing that a writer usually depicts his or her own secret desire in books, Marcus is wondering whether she wouldn't enjoy the same treatment in real life, so he attempts to rape her and take compromising pictures. She is saved at the very last moment by Ian's phone call. Ian wanted not only to save her, but to get rid of his dangerous younger rival too. So he has talked Manu into turning himself in and playing a madman, as this would exonerate her from any responsibility. Anxious to save Milena, Manu has agreed. Marcus suspects this set-up, but threatened by Ian's high unexplainable connections, release Milena and places Manu in an insane asylum. Impressed with Manu's ordeal, as she begins to fall for him, Milena figures out a way to have him released. She sends an anonymous report, on behalf of "angry workers", to the Supreme Leader, asking for those who hired a madman to be punished (because they had committed the true political sabotage) and threatening to call a strike if not satisfied. Out of the blue, Marcus is ordered to release Manu and declare him sane, since the regime would rather claim there is no madman worker than to punish its own Secret Police servants. Now Marcus hates Ian's gods, and decides to corner him in any way. He places him under permanent surveillance. After her new rescue by Ian, Milena has to surrender again to his protector's sexual fantasies. Tortured by an unknown feeling of culpability, Ian has meanwhile developed an alcohol problem. Unexpectedly released from asylum, Manu pops in and witnesses her sexual submission to Ian, strangely carried on a background screen displaying the Arch of Triumph image in Paris. He is devastated because he never had suspected Milena's intimate relationship with Ian. On top of this, he is now accused by his co-workers of being an informant, otherwise in their view he could not had been released. Devastated, Manu has a nervous breakdown and hurls himself into a freshly made wall, nearly killing himself, thus comitting a true political sabotage. More dead than alive, rejected by hospitals because of his so-called suicidal behavior, Manu is taken by his co-workers to Milena's home. Surrounded by books, Manu is immobilized in bed. She nurses him back to health in a cozy environment that seems this time to be their own only. The young construction worker proves to be not exactly a construction worker, since he had also been assigned at the construction site as a punishment for having written dishes recipes instead of praising the regime in a political-essay test in college. In order to get Milena out of this nightmare for good, and split her up with Manu once forever, Ian offers her a passport to flee the country to Paris, normally an impossible act under the dictatorship. As she is now in love with Manu, she refuses and splits up with Ian, enraging him out of jealousy. She continues to translate her book, to nurse Manu and initiate him in literature issues, forcing him with romantic gestures to read books. Answering his repetitive question (why did the sailor kill himself?), she encourages him to find out the answers to all riddles in the book only. She teaches him that all themes have already been written by masters like Shakespeare or Balzac, and writers ever since have only changed the characters. Thus, reversing the classic legend's roles of Pygmalion and Galathea, Milena brings Manu to a new life and forges him as the real character she wants and needs. Milena finishes the translation of her book. They dream of fleeing to the countryside and write books together. At this point, Maria drops in out of the blue to bring Manu news about his parents, imprisoned in a political camp. Although Manu rejects her, Maria tries to resume their romantic relationship. Suddenly Milena shows up, surprising them embraced. So she leaves Manu and goes back to Ian, accepting to flee the country. Ian, drunk, makes a terrible confession: he is actually an undercover intelligence agent - enrolment that he did for her. After her leaving him two years ago, he had joined the Secret Police forces, being aware that one day she would need his help. He had to be able to provide it, by thus managing to take her back. Milena is bewildered. But Ian's confession continues: he is now assigned to assassinate Augustin in Paris. Once in Paris, he won't accomplish his mission, instead he will defect and join Milena in freedom. Impressed with his sacrifice, Milena goes to an undisclosed address to wait for him to bring her a passport. Manu is looking for Milena everywhere. Apparently she vanished. He goes to Edgar and gives him the translation manuscript that Milena left home, hoping to find out where she could be. Edgar has no clue; instead he brings the manuscript to Marcus, because he is in fact a Secret Police collaborationist. Meanwhile, Marcus had decoded Ian's confession's record at his home. Thus Ian's treason is now exposed. As a consequence, Marcus unleashes Milena and Ian's haunting, as the traitor has now not only lost Bureau nr. 1' s protection, but was even ordered to be arrested and executed. Ian shoots down two agents that have come to arrest him and escapes. Following the sailor's footsteps in Beyond America, Manu ultimately finds Milena in the village on the seacoast where the sailor and his girlfriend in Milena's book used to meet. After their passionate encounter on the beach, they go back home. In the peasant house, there is Ian waiting for them. After Edgar's treason, he and Milena have to flee. He urges her to rush to catch a boat that is to leave in a few hours for Istanbul, but Marcus and a Secret Police platoon show up to arrest them. There is a shooting. Ian resists. He pushes Milena to flee through the back door. In the back yard, there is Stan pointing a gun at her. Milena succeeds escaping. Ian is shut and killed by the platoon agents. Hearing the shooting, Manu comes running. Stan shoots him down. Milena hides on the boat leaving for Istanbul, while Manu is thrown in a prison cell. Many years later, after the collapse of the communism, old Manu, now a writer, inspects his former cell. Over the Ocean, old Milena keeps coming everyday on the ferryboat linking Manhattan with the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island. She keeps reading the same book: Beyond America, ferry tales by Manu. History had separated their lives forever.

The decision taken by the hospitals council board of early releasing the neurotics and depressed, throw Mona 36 and Cathy 30 in the real world., a world which cannot offer them any place to live except a little house, without a roof , situated at the edge of the country , in the Danube Delta. Its Monas grandparents house, but both of them are dead. Their arrival triggers weird reactions on behalf of the villagers because they have big plans : to sell the village to a very rich man who own a football team and a political party who wants to turn the place into a luxurious resort. Could Mona and Cathy resist to the villagers reactions ? Could they find a place to live in this world ?

A boy and a girl, both teenagers, want to get away from the world and be alone for a while, so they hide in an abandoned factory on the outskirts. But there they fall in a trap of their own intention, and get stuck in the cargo elevator. There is no one around to hear them, and nobody knows their whereabouts. Tension arises after each failed attempt to escape, while they also have to deal with the fact that their entire universe is now reduced to a metal box smaller than a room.

In this movie the stars are Cosmin Selesi and Aliona Munteanu. Aliona won the best actress in 2009 at GOPO in Romania.

What's more important: friends or international fame? Smiley has one day to figure out the answer. An American talent scout is offering him a career in the United States, but on one condition: he has to quit his band, Simplu. The band members realize what's going on and they don't like it, which makes his decision even harder. Smiley's life gets even more complicated when he meets Mia, a mysterious girl with a passion for ballet and... tuned car races. Love at first sight is a great thing, but the clock is ticking and Smiley has to choose. Will Simplu be on the stage of the first block party in Romania at the end of the day? A dance-themed romantic comedy which reminds us that life would be much simpler if we didn't complicate it ourselves.

Avram comes to realize that Italians pay good money for trained dogs to protect them from the waves of immigrants. He returns to Romania to start breeding watch dogs to export. He complicates things with an affair with his daughter in law.

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.

Ana is a composer who lives a lonely life in her very clean house. All of a sudden her tidy existence is disturbed by a secret admirer whose actions have one element in common: the colour blue.

All important figures, from police officers to the president commit abuses and fight for rights that normal people doesn't dream.