Ilarion Ciobanu

1968, The Socialist Republic of Romania. Women catch up on the latest tendencies in beachwear, the young hippies of Hamburg are harshly criticized by Romanian students, while Nicolae Ceaușescu reads the famous defiance speech against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. Floating solemnly over all this is The Internationale, sung on a stadium by a crowd of pioneers dressed in white shirts and red ties. A certainty for each probability: the documentary is at the same time a history lesson and an ideological warning sign, the director’s endeavour permanently draws our attention to the functions of the propaganda film, yet without tarnishing the fascination that dwells in the core of the images, that of the figures that wave at us from a past buried in commonplaces and political parti pris.

The story takes place early in the 20th century in Eastern Romania, where a famous outlaw lived kind of a Clyde with many Bonnies legend in the landscape of the Danube Delta.

Andrei Blaier's film catches the last days of The Stone Cross a low class brothels area that became some kind of an institution in the landscape of Bucharest before the Communist period, doomed to destruction under the new rules of proletarian morals that the Communists were trying to impose. The idea could be the start of a great film, with the prostitution being seen not so much from its destructive and exploitation perspective, but rather as a form of freedom in a time when the whole society was falling under the rule of propaganda, hypocrisy, and repression. In a world due to fall under tyranny for the coming decades prostitution becomes a metaphor of the old more free way of life.

Six carpenters from Maramureș go to a village in Bărăgan to build some stables. These are the head of the family, 4 brothers and their sister, Mara. Her beauty attracts local suitors.

A typesetter is in search of an anonymous hero that saved two children.

In WWI a group of Romanian soldiers from Transylvania desert the german army and consitute a resistance commando group.

A peasant went to work in constructions for a few years in Bucharest. He's thinking of returning home, but only after overturning his father's unfair sentence.

Three youngsters are sent to "re-education through labor" on a hydro dam construction site. They prove in the end to fare much better than some of their colleagues.

The third part of the trilogy focuses on June and Romulus, who are having a baby. The misfortune delays the family's plans to move back to Transylvania. Things get even more complicated when Traian, one of the Brad brothers set out in search of water on his land, discovers crude oil.

The movie details the struggle of Iancu Jianu as he's torn between joining the struggle of the poor peasants from which he came from and being on the other side of the law working for the rich.