Lucien Pintilie’s film was set in Romania in 1988 towards the end of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule. The film follows a young woman who carries the ashes of her dead father, a member of the secret police, to a provincial town in a journey marked by brutal surprises. She passes through a country polluted morally and physically, drowning in trash and human indifference. Despite the film’s angry tone, its style is that of a surreal tragicomedy.
