Vlad Udrescu

Cristina, a mid 30s secretary living in an alienating and hostile Bucharest, is trying to understand what it means being a bills-paying, ready-to-settle, social-ladder-climbing adult while still desperately wanting to be a good child for the single mom that raised her. She is also a character in a novel that a theatre director is turning into a feature. As the actors start setting into the story, their individual backgrounds, social circumstances and personal motivations begin to overlap with the fiction they were offered, making it their own, questioning it and shaping it. The result is what it’s supposed to be: a playful mesh of perceived reality and fabrication.

In the style of Christian-Orthodox icons, Liviu Bărbulescu animates the story of Saint Nicodemus in a highly instructive way. Alas, this veneration of a holy figure is soon revealed to be an artistic satire of the crimes of the Orthodox Church in Romania.

A gripping story about a young woman abandoned at birth who tries to discover her past and find her place in a world ruled by money, power and closely guarded secrets