12:08 East of Bucharest
Starring: Teodor Corban, Ion Sapdaru, Mircea Andreescu
Director: Corneliu Poromboiu
The film: On paper, 12:08 East of Bucharest looks like challenging viewing. Corneliu Poromboiu's first feature-length film revolves around three Romanian men squabbling about the role each played in the revolution that toppled Nicolae Ceausescu on December 22, 1989.
Beyond the scene-setting section in the first half-hour or so, the film mostly takes place inside a ramshackle local television studio, with the protagonists seated behind a desk in front of the camera, against a set that keeps falling down.
All this just goes to show what an imaginative story-telling and filmmaking force the 32-year-old Poromboiu is, for 12:08 East of Bucharest is at once a scathing social satire and a piece of evocative human drama, capturing neatly the social shifts in Romania and how the changes since Ceausescu was booed off his pedestal and led to a firing squad three days later have scarred those old enough to witness them at first-hand.
The title refers to that moment in history. The film takes place in a small provincial town east of Bucharest, at the time the revolution was supposed to have begun. That is the basis of the row: whether the now middle-aged schoolteacher Manescu (Ion Sapdaru) was among the few youths who dared to shout anti-Ceausecscu slogans at the town square before things began to unravel in the capital.