4 Proof Film

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

On behalf of a multinational company, a production assistant drives around the Romanian city of Bucharest, interviewing various citizens who have been injured due to work accidents to cast one of them in a “safety at work” video.

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.

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.

Horia Colibasanu is a dentist, father of two boys and elite climber. In 2008, he refused to abandon, at 7400 meters on the Annapurna, his sick companion, the Basque mountaineer Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, implanted his own life in danger. His action dazzled the climbing community. Despite this tragic incident, he continued to climb in pure alpine style, without supplemental oxygen. In 2017, the 40-year-old Romanian athlete will return to Everest, after two unsuccessful attempts. For the first time, Horia is attempting a solo ascent.

Petru is a drilling engineer living in a community of oil industry workers. He has mixed feelings. On the one hand he is about to marry his pregnant girlfriend Laura, on the other he is involved with the wife of one of his colleagues, Sonia, the victim of a serious accident at work. His new life seems about to begin while she feels hers is ending. When Laura finds out about his relationship with Sonia, all hell breaks loose. Petru feels terrible guilt, but also responsibility for the baby-to-be.

Romanian-born Radu Patru is a trainee at a prestigious French news network. Serving as a translator and general problem solver, or "fixer," for the headlining journalists during his trial period, he's looking to make his big break. He sees his opportunity when two underage Romanian prostitutes are repatriated from France, creating an international scandal. Taking advantage of his language skills and local connections, Radu is prepared to do whatever it takes to interview one of the young girls. But as he ventures into tricky moral ground, he must stop to ask himself if, as an aspiring journalist, he can live with the consequences of his actions, and if, as a father, he's setting a good example for his son.

It's not just any day at the factory for our shady but somehow admirable hero Iulica (Gabriel Spahiu), Health and Safety Chief, but the morning after the glorious victory of underdogs Steaua Bucharest in the European Champions Cup over the mighty Barcelona - the only Romanian team ever to win it. Everyone, or at least the men, really wants to be celebrating this, but in fact it's Romanian Communist Party Day which is taking centre stage in the works canteen.

Babisa has just had a beautiful baby girl. But to be released from hospital she needs a signature from her own mum, whom she has not seen since she was a child. Silent observing glances speak volumes in this fast-paced and powerful drama about complex family relationships.

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

A 14-year-old girl auditions for a film role as an abused sex worker, and the director tries to convince her mother of the artistic rationale behind the provocative part.

At Radu Maligan's 94th anniversary the family members and the former colleagues of the old man come to his birthday party. Everything gets complicated when half of the guests try to convince Radu to confess his sins to a priest, while the others think that no one should be forced to do something beyond their will.

Alexandru Popovici is a man obsessed with women, whom he films relentlessly. This montage of family and anonymous archives questions the male gaze in the era of Romanian totalitarianism.