Robert Radoveneanu

Growing up without her parents, who had gone to work in the West, Flavia became a tough but distant teenager. The routine that keeps her safe and emotionally isolated is disrupted when two young children who have run away from home seek shelter with her.

In the remote Romanian village of Catane, a community of villagers, long surviving on disability benefits obtained through ambiguous means, faces exposure when a local inquiry descends. What unfolds is not a story of deception, but of unexpected ingenuity as the villagers craft a disarmingly poetic and humorous response to the absurdities of a broken system. In reinventing their way of life, they reveal not only a means of survival—but a radical model of communal resilience in a fractured world.

The grim realities of daily life in post-Communist Romania are described in this dark drama, which was filmed on-location in the poorer areas of Bucharest. Pepe & Fifi are brother and sister. Pepe is a struggling boxer, and Fifi is a barfly addicted to Bucharest's sleazy night life. This movie chronicles their daily lives while commenting upon the political and economic situation in Romania.

A little boy asks you for money. A rich old man calls for health. A supermodel sneezes. Two surgeons endlessly invite each other to make the first cut. A young soprano converts to music a savage sitting in a tree. And so on and and so on - Is there a way out of this?