Directed by Stere Gulea
Romania, 1995, 89 minutes
Cast: Oana Pellea, Mircea Rusu, Răzvan Vasilescu, Dan Condurache, Luminiţa Gheorghiu, Cornel Scripcaru

Gulea’s film seems intent on revealing life’s tragic paradoxes and sad ironies as reflected in recent Romanian history. It is December 21st, 1989 and a severely wounded teenager shows up in the middle of the night at the front door of a young nurse. She takes him for care at the hospital where her soon-to-be husband works, only to find him the morning after in the hospital’s morgue, shot dead in the head. In the instability and chaos that ensues, the couple is pressured into providing fake documents which would absolve the secret police for his death, and others. The woman refuses to collaborate and her nightmare begins: she is arrested and convicted on a trumped-up charge, consequently being humiliated, beaten up and raped in prison. Her only comfort remains the child she is carrying.