Mandragora Film (RO)

The Holy Week, around 1900, somewhere in Romania. The tense relationship between the Jewish innkeeper Leiba and Gheorghe, his Christian employee, reaches the point where the innkeeper decides to expel the latter. Revengeful, Gheorghe promises Leiba that he will return on Easter Night to “settle” his accounts. This threat comes as a last straw against Leiba’s attempts to cohabit with his hostile, anti-Semitic environment. From then on, Leiba will struggle distinguishing between the real danger and the one fabricated by his anxieties, engaging onto a path of transformation leading to extreme consequences.

In the Romanian town of Craiova, five hundred elderly people are passing their days in a home, for which they pay with their paltry pensions. Every day looks the same, every activity is predictable. Even the people‘s complaints are part of the daily routine. One of the residents hopes in vain that a lottery ticket will bring him refuge. For six days, filmmakers Andreea Paduraru and Cristi Puiu try to get through to these people, who are carrying their whole past on their backs. To the question what the best days of their lives was, nobody can or wants to give an answer. Nearly everyone immediately starts about the day-to-day worries and problems in the home. Finally, one woman tells about her activities as head of the research department of the government of Ceausescu, with whom she once had an argument. Another resident recalls his time as a soldier in World War II and proceeds to the order of the day.

On the night of 5th to 6th of May 1950, DGSP, the political police of the communist regime, which was recently installed with the help of the Red Army, arrested in Bucharest 69 former politicians, generals, secretaries of state, ministers and prime ministers, in an operation later called »The Night of the Dignitaries«. Due to the specificity of the NKVD modus operandi, the former officials arrested that night didn’t receive any kind of information regarding the reason of their arrest. Moreover, in the next days they were sent directly to Sighetu Marmatiei prison, without a trial.

For the people living on a street in downtown Bucharest, the torture has started a few days previous, when a construction site was set up on their street.