Based on a theatrical text by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912), who was a bitter and funny witness of the turn-of-the-20th-century Romanian bourgeois mores, Carnival Scenes manages to preserve and further enhance the slightly hysteric atmosphere of his plays. Pintilie creates a strange combination of carnival scenes which is brought to the screen as a burlesque, fast-paced, screwball comedy with a meditative undertone. This film was banned in Romania for a decade until the death of Ceausescu in 1989 and was only released after the 1989 revolution.
In 1950 a Western spy is clandestinely parachuted into Communist Romania to retrieve secret WW2 codes and agent lists and also to assist a group of anti-Communist guerrillas escape but the Communist police is setting a trap.
This blend of comedy and psycho-drama is comprised of two disturbing stories. The first tells the tale of a robot who is set to Earth by his home planet to discover new energy sources. In the second a boy is sent into deep space as part of an inhuman experiment designed to create the perfect human.
The story of a love triangle, in which a romanian and a hungarian love the same woman. Happening during WWII, the two hate each other. The movie was banned shortly after the release.
A prosecutor, policemen and teacher bring the students Vuica and Nicu to a restaurant to re-enact their drunken brawl there, and have it filmed to show the effects of alcoholism.
In a poverty stricken village in 1947 Moldavia, the obsession for getting rich of Prisac turns the community against him. Based on "La Răzeși" (Yeomans) novel by Valeriu Emil Galan.
Romania, 1940. A boy meets a girl. They fall in love without suspecting anything about their real identities. They chose an eventful, tense and dangerous life as underground anti-fascists fighters. The significance of their activity is manifest in the consequences it has on the tormented progress of their love. Reality is against it. Two parallel lines which meet for a second, only to drift apart for ever.