Synopsis

What needs to happen before a man can overcome his endless loneliness? Old Costache (played by Victor Rebengiuc, most likely Romania’s best actor in his generation) is a farmer in a small village afflicted by heavy floods. The floods not only destroyed his home, but also killed his wife. Costache is all alone now. He meets his son Ticu again, who emigrated to Japan twenty years earlier and started a family of his own there. Despite their differing views and expectations, father and son must painfully realise just how far away they have drifted from one another. When Ticu finally leaves to return to Japan, it seems as though nothing else remains but a small robot dog which Ticu’s son gave to his grandfather as a parting gift.

Tudor Christian Jurgiu tells an emphatic and lyrical story about reunions and goodbyes, expectations and disappointments and about reconciliation, told in in calm, expressive pictures of the untouched nature, which plays a leading role in this film. A most impressive debut film, which is quite rightly Romania’s Academy Award entrant in 2015.