Scurt/4: Istorii de inimã neagrã

A bloody thriller (sort of Agatha Christie does The Twilight Zone) morphs into its own “making of”, a really talky one - a conversation about film, about fear, about fiction. The type of film where the less you know, the better. The title is almost a malaprop - a better one would’ve been F for Fake, but it was already taken. Howard Hawks said that a great movie needs three good scenes and no bad ones. This movie has only three scenes - so there you go.

How do seven young people, former street children from Romania, get to see the Pacific Ocean? On 1 December 2008, a Romanian national team participates for the first time in the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. The film follows the team from the formation of the squad to the end of the championship. The young people are from Timisoara and Arad, runaway children who now live in abandoned houses or who have managed to get a job and live in rented accommodation after going through orphanages or prisons. After taking a beating from many teams, the young Romanians manage to beat the USA. They are happy. They are all thinking of never going "home" again. It's warm and nice here, the people are nice. "In case I stay, I kissed you all!" says one of them cautiously. But after taking pictures of themselves on the beach with the ocean behind them and beautiful girls by their side, the seven return to Romania and get on with their lives.

This is a film about what the car traffic turns us into. For 5 months the director in the passenger seat accompanies five ordinary people (A half paralyzed man who not only drives a car, but he also helps other people to avail themselves of cars; Peruvian woman, who was been raised in a city with an equally crazed traffic; a father who has recently lost his daughter in a traffic accident; a policeman who was beaten up by the militia before December 1989) on their every day journeys around the capital.

The Romanian penitentiary system allows, from 2006, the marriage of people sentenced to serve time in prison. Most of the inmates cultivate the pre-existing relationships with the concubines or partners who live outside the prison walls. Though, there is a special category, of those who find a life partner during their time in prison. VISITING ROOM follows the stories of some prisoners found in different penitentiaries across the country, who have found their life partner during their sentence time. The one is either a person from outside, or as them, a person who is serving time in prison. Our intention was to talk to the people found in the special situation of being deprived of freedom, to whom love becomes a substitute for freedom and represents maybe their only hope for a better future.

Three men go into a pub. The first man has too many questions. The second man has the perfect plan. The third man has no chance.

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 film tells the story of one of the oldest circus families in Romania, descendants of the Globus Circus founder, Toma Zdebschi. Mina and Carol have been married for 55 years. They were both circus artists. Mina is 75 and Carol is 84.

One perfect house. One perfect marriage. One perfect Sunday morning.

A couple of weeks after his wife Ioana dies in a car crash, drunk and alone on the night he turns 42, Alexandru receives a visit. Sebastian, a shy, younger man, has been Ioana's lover for the past five months. Sebastian has an outrageous request: he wants Alexandru to help him overcome the despair caused by Ioana's death.

Seven months after their divorce, Ducu pays Maria one last visit...

One night, just before the holidays, in an empty park, two small-time thugs hold up a strange looking man. Where's the Christmas spirit?

On a seemingly normal evening, a young girl has the misfortune of encountering the wrong people. For her, this turns into a nightmare in which she is not even sure if she will survive the night...

A "behind-the-scenes" insight of the Romanian wedding industry, with cameramen, photographers and singers from all around the country in the spotlight. Their life stories, their editing styles, their hands-on-approach know-how and, of course, their performances at weddings, mix up in a shortcut-style film. George Stirbat, the 30-something one-man-show singer from the small town of Onesti returned home after a mini-Broadway career and Petru Manici, the coal mine electrician from the mining town of Petrosani, are just two of the most interesting characters the film follows in their quest to achieve perfection for the bride's and groom's memories. Something to remember.