In a devastating story rife with visual metaphors, Romanian director Mircea Daneliuc traces the slow mental disintegration of a confirmed gambler, using his disorder as an allusion to a greater national and social disorder. Set in the 1930s, the middle-class gambler meets an elderly man who seems to bring him good luck at the gaming tables. Rather than treasure his friendship and the good fortune it brings, the gambler takes advantage of his friend, and by his actions drives the man to suicide. Unable to reconcile his own mental demons, the gambler wanders through the house of his dead friend, and his experiences there only serve to unsettle his mind more and more and more. In the last reels of the film, the fantasies of the hero's deranged mind take over.
Professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Nazis. While on the run, the professor meets a young woman who has her own experience with a lightning storm. Not only does Dominic find love again, but her new abilities hold the key to his research.
A young Romanian gendarme, Cristi, tries to find the balance between two apparently opposing parts of his identity: that of a man working in a macho hierarchical environment and that of a closeted gay person who tries to keep his personal life a secret. Cristi is called in for an intervention at a movie theatre, where an ultra-nationalist, homophobic group has interrupted the screening of a queer film. After one of the protesters threatens to out him, Cristi spirals out of control.
After the revolution of December 1989, Romania is in full transition. Incertainty and chaos have followed Ceausescu's downfall. Fane, a worker in a wharf on the river Danube, is a former dissident who was in involved in politically motivated uprisings. Now that he has achieved what he has fought for, he is unemployed and everything around him seems to fall to pieces. His whole family falls victim to the changes of the early 90s. His daughter prostitutes herself, his elder son ends up in prison and his younger son becomes a thief.
In the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian Mountains a woman is traveling with a small boy in a horse and cart, looking to punish those who once abused her. For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Órban serves as a living reminder.
In the communist Romania of Nicolae Ceausescu, a young Romanian woman marries a German citizen just to leave the country.
When jobless Tommy Collins discovers that sequestered jurors earn free room and board as well as $5-a-day, he gets himself assigned to a jury in a murder trial. Once there, he does everything he can to prolong the trial and deliberations and make the sequestration more comfortable for himself.
Three young man run in the rain with a borrowed car. The first accident, whose victim is a girl, gives the signal for a race through the city to escape the police crews. Race ends tragically, with another serious incident, even one victim is involved. The only way out is escape. The film shows the psychological transformation of fugitives, in their desperate attempt to evade the consequences and pressures of their conscience.
Aymé Pigrenet, a recently widowed farmer, is eager to find a new wife to help him run his farm. Desperate, he seeks the aid of a local matchmaker who suggest that he go to Romania to find a new wife. There he meets Elena.