Directed by Lucian Pintilie
Romania, 1992, 105 minutes
Cast: Maia Morgenstern, Răzvan Vasilescu, Victor Rebengiuc, Dorel Vişan, Mariana Mihuţ, Dan Condurache, Virgil Andriescu  

The Oak is an absorbing, complicated black comedy about Romania at the end of the Ceauşescu regime. A young schoolteacher named Nela embarks on a spiritual journey after the death of her father, a former government official, whose ashes she takes to toting in a coffee jar. On her wanderings through grotesque and often violent surroundings, she meets Mitică. The couple, like Tristan and Isolde at the gates of the Orient, cannot live out their love according to the rules. A series of events — floods, pollution, Mitică's arrest, military maneuvers and massacres — split up our heroes, and reveal a context in which nothing works properly and everything seems to be falling apart. Everyone is bitter and life is shown as a series of random, meaningless instances of chaos and brutality, characterizing a socio-political structure which makes these events seem normal. 

“This film… is Mr. Pintilie's reaction to the 1989 collapse of the Communist regime in his country and his expectations for the future. It begins as a nightmare and ends with a vague expectation of the break of day… Mr. Pintilie seems to suggest that there is still hope for Romania, though it's not just around the corner.” — Vincent Canby, New York Times