Sabin Dorohoi

For over a hundred years, Mărculești was a vibrant Jewish agricultural and mercantile community in Bessarabia (now present-day Moldova). In July 1941, the village was the site of an unimaginable atrocity. Seventy-three years later, few speak honestly or completely about what happened. ABSENT is a cinematic portrait of the ghost village of Mărculești, its current inhabitants, and their very complex relationship to their own history. Filmed entirely on location, the film documents one of Europe's poorest, most remote, and least-visited places.

Set on the background of economical migration, the film tells the story of Clara, a divorced Romanian mother in her thirties who needs to work abroad in Ulm, a German Town by the Danube river. She is as a babysitter for a little girl that is very fond of. At the same time, she had to leave behind her own 12 years old son who is now in the care of his grandfather. They live in a poor Romanian village also by the Danube river. Feeling abandoned by his mother, the boy runs away from home in an attempt to reach his mother by traveling on a small boat upriver. In this context, Clara has to come back home and face the life she left behind.

In the summer of 2017, Romanian librarian Avram Iancu swims the entire length of the Danube river in Europe—2860 km / 1777 miles—without a neoprene suit, for the first time in the world. An adventure story that shows the extreme determination needed to overcome dramatic moments. From the cold and clear waters of the Danube springs in Germany, to the endless expanses of the Danube Planes in Romania, it’s a story of continuous physical and psychological struggle, mixed with all sorts of emotions. Avram’s inspiration for this project came after reading the Jules Verne novel “The Danube Pilot”.

Somewhere in the heart of Transylvania, in remote villages, odd traditions are still present. When a young man traveling to Sibiu for a business meeting makes a wrong turn and gets lost, a surprising chain of events changes his path.