THE OAK

When her father, a former officer in the Securitate and loyal supporter of the Ceaucescu regime, dies in Bucharest in 1988, Nela, a young schoolteacher, is at his bedside. She attempts to donate his body to medical science, as he has willed, but neither the coroner's office nor the university will accept the corpse since their refrigerators aren't working. Thus begins a darkly humorous parable about contemporary Romania as told through Nela's destiny. Undaunted by her rude introduction to the political and social turmoil of her country, Nela leaves to teach in a provincial city where she meets a kindred spirit in Mitica, an optimistic young doctor at the local hospital. Despite the couple's rebelliousness, they survive unscathed as if enveloped in a state of grace various natural catastrophes, military actions, and acts of political terrorism. In Romanian with English subtitles.