After suffering terrible headaches and stomach cramps, Mr. Lăzărescu, a lonely 63 year-old man, calls for an ambulance, beginning one man’s hellish journey through Bucharest hospitals in search of proper medical care. As the night unfolds, his health starts to deteriorate fast.
Child's Pose is a contemporary drama focusing on the relationship between a mother and her 32-year-old son. After the accidental killing of a boy in a car crash, the mother tries to prevent her son being charged for the death, and she refuses to accept that her son is a grown-up man.
Back from a professional trip to Paris, a neurologist at the pinnacle of his career has to pick up his wife so that they can attend a family meal to commemorate his father, who died a year before. At his mother's flat, the guests are waiting for the priest to arrive while arguing about all kinds of...
Adi, a gay teenager, is spending the summer in his home village in the Danube Delta. One night he is brutally attacked on the street, the next day his world is turned upside-down. His parents no longer look at him as they did, and the seeming tranquility of the village starts to crack.
Paul Hanganu loves two women. Adriana his wife and the mother of their daughter, the woman with whom he's shared the thrills of the past ten years, and Raluca the woman who has made him redefine himself. He has to leave one of them before Christmas.
Costi is a family man whose cash-strapped neighbor makes him an intriguing proposition: help him find the fortune reportedly buried somewhere on the grounds of his family’s country home in Romania and split the profits.
Ana and Nicolae, a young Romanian couple, travel by bus from Bucharest to Vienna with the prospect of making quick money by handing over a stolen car. As soon as they arrive, however, they are reassured that the car is not yet ready for them. Ana then wants to go back to Romania, Nicolae would...
In the heart of the Danube Delta, superstition and religion are mixed together, like the earth and water that make up the mysterious mud from Tekir’s area, not far away. Chased away from her village because of her mysterious pregnancy, Mara finds herself employed at the Europa Hotel, providing...
Petru is a drilling engineer living in a community of oil industry workers. He has mixed feelings. On the one hand he is about to marry his pregnant girlfriend Laura, on the other he is involved with the wife of one of his colleagues, Sonia, the victim of a serious accident at work. His new life...
Felix, a high rescue specialist, brings down suiciders from bridges in a city in crisis. His son, who secretly makes videos of dangerous rescues and sells them to TV, blames his father for the loss of his mother. As Felix tries to reconnect with his son and help people at any cost, dramatic events...
Drawing inspiration from Wald, a 2015 novel by the bestselling author Doris Knecht, as well as her own traumatic experience of witnessing the 2020 Vienna attack, writer-director Elisabeth Scharang retreats to the woods in this atmospheric and soul-stirring film.
Alex, in his mid-thirties, is a quite neurotic character. When his mother is hospitalized with a stroke, the caring son's life gets out of track. At the hospital he finds himself in a burlesque kind of human zoo full of unexpected characters and surprising events. Trying to manage the situation in...
Infidelity drama, male egos, lost dogs in Startsladden favorite Stefan Constantinescu’s arthouse gem about a man consumed by jealousy who risks losing everything while searching for the truth.
This story is about letting go. Sometimes we can't let go, and this might result in consequences that end in tragedy. There's only one thing we can do: face ourselves.
Luca (20) seduces girls then leaves them in the hands of his friends at the Black Sea port of Constanta. Luca falls in love with Veli, one of his potential victims. It's summer down the Danube river, in Harsova. The music is loud, the cars are fancy, the girls are tanned and Veli runs away from...
Cristina and Tudor have founded a happy family with their two children, Maria and Ilie. They are in their thirties and live an ordinary life in a nice apartment in a Romanian town, but one Sunday morning when Tudor takes his kids to the park, Maria disappears. Their lives abruptly change forever.
It's Christmas Eve in a small mountain train station and no train is coming since all the tracks are blocked with snow. Four people are waiting for a train that doesn't show up. They don't know each other, how long it's going to take or if they will ever reach their destinations. But as the hours...
When the Soviet Army marched into Romania in 1944, a part of the Romanian population went “into the mountains” – a diverse assortment of nationalists and fascists, liberals, apolitical farmers and members of the middle-class, who were affected by the Communists’ expropriations. Over a...
Costi (30) suddenly comes up with the idea of visiting his father, Sandu, and arrange a surprise reunion with the rest of the family that Sandu has neglected all his life. It's Costi's way of running away from his own couple issues for a day.