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A war story. survivors. refugees. few essential meetings. and great actors. a film inspired from Zaharia Stancu short story. about pain, search of sense in misty times, about roots of evil and price of survive, about a country as shadow and ruins of a empire. all in dark nuances, touching images. a movie like a ballad. heavy, strange, profound, harsh, cruel. with few drops of feelings as steps of rotten ladder. looks, silhouettes, way to ambiguous home. a thief and a young man. across Balkans. among ash of a fragile territory. the impressive aspect – silence. and gestures. the woman, the train. the escape. the bath. and the death of Diplomat. all – fragments of an old way to discover reality. all – words of a new world.
In 1916 as an officer in the Habsburg Army ethnic Romanian Apostol Bologa is torn between remaining loyal to the Habsburgs or deserting to the Romanian Army across enemy lines.
Mara, a hard-working widow, brings up her two children in a developing industrial Transylvanian town.
Inspired by a Voltaire tale, a satire of society and its values through the astonished and critical eyes of a newly arrived "ingénue" who ridicules all customs in order to marry the woman of his heart.
