Barbie

An effective, sophisticated and accurate piece of timeless narrative, a testimony of the individual truth that is always ingrained within the actual and social facts of history. Between the last days of the "Geniul din Carpati," or Nicolae Ceausescu, and the years immediately following his famous execution by firing squad that was shown live on TV (25 December 1998), Romania fell into the uncertainty of a revolution that was never implemented in practice. Reflecting a society split between the desire for freedom and the latent immobility of an entire generation born of the backwardness of the Ceauseschian regime, is Nicu, a teacher living in Bucharest. Within the short span of a few months, Nicu finds himself unemployed and has to face the hardships of a job that is no longer there, money that is scarce, and food that is lacking. Mihail, a preadolescent boy of the underground, lives with his friend Barbie within the sewer system that cuts across the city. Always populated by a young humanity, the sewers of Bucharest form a jungle where the law of the strongest prevails, where one gets high sniffing Aurolac from plastic bags and in order to eat one prostitutes oneself in exchange for a handful of dollars. One day, on the snow-covered meadows of the Tineretului Park, that green space of Bucharest and the invisible wall of partition separating the good neighborhoods from the periphery, Nicu’s and Mihail’s stories cross.