Ioana Barbu

A sad satire about the Internet age. A Romanian echo of the famous story of the first high-profile case of online bullying. In 2005, a dog happened to make a pile in the Seoul subway. For some unknown reason, the owner of the dog refused to clean up the poop. The crime of the dog and the inexplicable inaction of the lady was recorded on camera and caused a huge online scandal.

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A return in time. A look over the shoulder, with irony and humor. A story about a generation that could not guess in those years how close the "change" would be. A world controlled and subordinated to some iron rules that they had to accept in silence and resist, because they stubbornly wanted to live. It was their life and they wanted to live it.

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An immigrant in search of the American dream is forced to take a room in a boarding house and soon finds herself in a nightmare from which she can't escape.

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In the household of a wealthy Romanian noblewoman in 1855, Maria, a Roma-Gipsy slave, fights to obtain freedom for her son Dinca. Part of a future full-length project, the short film presents a day in the household in which Maria and her son, Dinca, serve as slaves. As important guests arrive for dinner and all the slaves are making preparations, Maria and her son see this day as a chance to take a step to change their fate. During slavery time, up until 1856, the Romanian equivalent of the word "forgiveness" was used when referring to freeing someone from slavery (the Roma slave was "forgiven" from slavery).

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Adi (40), a shy and introverted anthropologist who got recently dumped by his girlfriend, moves to Ferentari, most notorious outcasted neighborhood in Bucharest. He wants to write a study on manele music. The pop music of the Roma community serves as a way out for some, but mostly as one more means for the mafia pimps to make money off their acts and keep them in slave-like dependency. While researching his subject, Adi meets Alberto, a Roma ex-convict and a bear of a man, who promises Adi to help him. Soon, the unlikely pair begins a playful romance in which Adi feeds Alberto with improbable plans of escaping poverty and Alberto reciprocates with well-concocted phrases of love. Little by little their casual affair grows into love. And the funny and sweet teasing turns into something precarious, since Alberto is both dangerous and fragile and belongs to a world whose codes Adi doesn't understand.

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Two fathers, a Romanian searching for his daughter who was forced into prostitution in Kosovo, and a Serbian seeking the body of his son killed in a car accident in Romania, meet on the river Danube. A boatman recounts the 200 year-old legend of Romanian peasants struggling unsuccessfully to move an old wooden church up the hill to their village at a time when building Orthodox churches was prohibited.

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Love. It just happens. No rules. It may look sick, but it's deep and it hurts. For everyone, Alex and Kiki are just good friends. They happen to be two girls experiencing another kind of love. For their family, Kiki and Sandu are sister and brother who sometimes fight. They happen to be lovers. Love Sick is about their stories.

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