Sandu Sticlaru

Based on true events. In the Romanian town of Lupeni August 5, 1929, driven to despair by hard labor conditions miners under the leadership of Communists organized a strike. The miners demanded higher wages and an eight-hour workday. They opposed the government's attempts to shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto the workers' shoulders. The government, concerned about the scale of the strike and the workers' determination not to give in to their demands, ordered troops to shoot at unarmed people. On August 7, the strike was brutally suppressed. Many workers were killed. But these events have forever gone down in the history of the Romanian labor movement as an example of solidarity, heroism and invincibility of the people.

The story of the rescue of workers trapped in a snow avalanche in a remote mountain cabin.

A kid discovers he has heart disease, his mother was trying to keep that from him. He is depressed that he cannot play with the other children. For his mother there is a dilema: not to take any risks and have his boy lead an isolated life, or go with the risky heart surgery.

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.

The communists are taking over the boyar land and do the agrarian reform.

Adam, a young and poor fisherman, falls in love with Uliana, but the girl's parents want her to marry Simion. To get rid of him, Simion blames Adam of the drowning of his fellow fishermen he was with out in a storm.

With his nose pressed against the glass, four-year-old Ionel watches the kids playing ball in the street with great interest. His father, a schoolteacher, has lost his job. Now he goes to various institutions in vain, because in bourgeois Romania it is not easy to find a job. Ionel waits for his father every night and while waiting for him he dreams of getting a real yellow ball for his birthday. His father realizes that it is necessary to get the money and buy the ball. After all, the boy is crippled, and the ball is the only hope for him to get well...

Follows the inner transformation of a man who tried to fight his demon, the love for money, and lost.