Clara Vodă

Ricardo, an amusing grumpy middle-aged man, decides to travel overland to India, as he used to do, shipping hippies in the sixties. Only now he has other things on his mind. He has been in a wheelchair for 10 years, suffering from a degenerative disease, that's pushing into its final stages. This is to be his last journey. Accompanied by his housekeeper Dana he sets off, crossing Europe, through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan. It turns out to be a funny and inspiring journey, opening doors both Ricardo and Dana thought were closed forever. As the landscape widens ahead, all of the crucial things of life unfold before them. Most importantly, Ricardo finds a reason to live.

Wonderfully surreal, painfully real, this is the story of children, adults and animals who live together trying to have a better life, but sometimes death comes unexpectedly. The lives of three characters surrounded by a bunch of extraordinary, funny, absurd but quite realistic events. It is all about us, people who eat the animals that they love and the animals that love people unconditionally.

One worker in a bankrupt factory finds an unusual solution to save his co-workers from unemployment. If it doesn't work the factory will be privatized and sold to a French company planning to convert the plant into a snail cannery. Only 300 of the 3000 workers will keep their jobs.

On July 19–21, 2001, over 200,000 people took to the streets of Genoa to protest against the ongoing G8 summit. Anti-globalization activists clashed with the police, with 23-year-old protester Carlo Giuliani shot dead after confronting a police vehicle. In the aftermath, the police organized a night raid on the Diaz high school, where a hundred unarmed people between protesters—mostly students—and independent reporters who documented the police brutality during the protests had took shelter. What happened next would be called by Amnesty International "the most serious breach of civil liberties in a democratic Western country since World War II."

Alex, in his mid-thirties, is a quite neurotic character. When his mother is hospitalized with a stroke, the caring son's life gets out of track. At the hospital he finds himself in a burlesque kind of human zoo full of unexpected characters and surprising events. Trying to manage the situation in between everybody's advice, he's coming hypochondriac. While his mother seems to feel perfectly fine Alex is making his own set of mistakes - throughout with best intentions.

Luca (20) seduces girls then leaves them in the hands of his friends at the Black Sea port of Constanta. Luca falls in love with Veli, one of his potential victims. It's summer down the Danube river, in Harsova. The music is loud, the cars are fancy, the girls are tanned and Veli runs away from home in Luca's bed. First love has never felt more dangerous.

An apartment kitchen: a man and a woman discuss Little Red Riding Hood, their voices hushed, mindful of waking the little girl sleeping next room. Waste land on the city outskirts: behind a line of abandoned trailers, the man silently watches what seems to be a family. The same city, the same man: driving through traffic with two hand-made firing pins for a hunting rifle. The man is 42 years old, his name - Viorel. Troubled by obscure thoughts, he drives across the city to a destination known only to him.

There's no place like home. As long as you know where your heart is.

Mircea has a 15-year-old daughter whose boyfriend is invited to dine with the family. He arrives early and they go to her bedroom. While watching TV, Mircea can hear his daughter moaning from her room. The dinner starts and Mircea finds out that the boyfriend supports a different football team.

A teenager prisoner awaits his release when two weeks before that happens he's told that his mother is returned home. Meanwhile, he finds himself in love with a Sociology student, Ana, working in the penitentiary as an intern.

Parents squabbling over a sick bird that was brought in by their son Alex.

A beautiful Western woman asks a Gypsy to watch her four-year-old child while she is taught how to swim by a flirtatious married man, before she disappears into the sea.

A beautiful Western woman asks a Gypsy to watch her four-year-old child while she is taught how to swim by a flirtatious married man, before she disappears into the sea.

Mr. Lazarescu is a retired Romanian engineer, spending his time in the company of his cats and booze. When he starts feeling unusually ill, he first seeks painkillers from his neighbors. It soon becomes apparent that Lazarescu is indeed sick, and an ambulance arrives with a nurse who has a few ideas about what could be the problem. However, a major traffic accident and poor organization leaves little room in Romanian hospitals for the fading Lazarescu.

While fully enjoying the life of the 70's, in communist Romania, a young man is arrested and accused of a terrible crime. Freed a few years later and deeply affected by his sinister experience, he tries to find out what had really happened.

This Romanian dramatic comedy offers metaphorical commentary on life after Ceausescu's reign as it tells the story of a rural community turned topsy-turvy in their mad quest for the snails a prominent senator has requested for his dinner. The trouble begins when a rather imposing, pompous senator comes to visit a small rural Romanian town for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new hydro-electric dam. After he finishes his speech, the senator is accosted by a Swiss film crew eager to interview him. The senator is inordinately concerned with presenting a positive image of Romania to the world at large and so when he learns that he and the journalists are to stay at the same villa, does everything he came to make sure that they see nothing scandalous.

'Pop-Up' is a triptych drama about three strangers affected by one random event. It was filmed in Newcastle, Australia, and Transylvania, Romania.