YOUBESC

Different portraits, four short stories, four moments in time capturing the wanderings of a few souls, stuck at the crossroads of History.

Moldova in the early 90s: Dima, a tractor driver, wants to be enrolled in the military troops to take part in the local war on the Transnistrian border. Vasea, an Afghan war veteran, joins him. While on their way to the front, they find a carbonized body. The authorities ignore them and won't help them to identify the body. Dima and Vasea decide to bury the corpse according to the proper Christian rituals, but not before setting out, together with the body, on an absurd journey to discover his identity.

Sasha works for a natural gas company. When his wife gives birth 2 months early, Sasha is searching for money to save the premature baby. Despite this, he refuses to take bribes, which threatens his job and leads to friction with his colleagues. His wife doesn't understand him anymore. Faced with a crisis, Sasha receives an order to install a furnace in a church, where he will have to destroy an icon painted on the church wall. Hoping to save the sacred image, Sasha has to corrupt the system.

After two years spent as a student in Boston, a 22-year-old visits his native Moldova. It is April 2009. People gather in the streets of Chisinau, the call having spread through social networking sites. They are demonstrating against the communist authorities who falsified the election results. They seize and plunder the parliament and presidential buildings. The demonstrators carry away documents, furniture and office equipment. Our protagonist is coming from a friend's home carrying his own computer monitor. He is mistaken for a demonstrator, brutally beaten up by the police and taken to the police station. His interrogator is an experienced major. The authorities can do anything. Based on real events, the film asks questions about freedom, justice and the price of human life.

In a poor village near the Transnistrian border, after the war of 1992, there is a mined field, still active. Zinca and Victor, two Moldavian children suddenly lose the cows on the mined territory and try to get them back.

The story about the pensioner Georgi, who spends the rest of his days somewhere in a remote place in Moldova. The lonely old man earns his living by cleaning cauldrons from soot. About events in the world he learns from the rural newspaper which the local postman brings at the same time every day. Georgi has a serious heart condition and quietly awaits his death. He has reconciled with fate for a long time, when suddenly everything in his life changes radically — and all because of the old rural toilet which turns into a teleport and transports the old man into different corners of the world.

An anthology of five short films showcasing Moldova like never before, blending magical journeys, cultural clashes and strange encounters.