Based on the novel "The Artist" by Francisca Munteanu. Romania in the 30s. A young talented artist Mihai Strihan, a student at the Academy of Painting, sees how fascism is poisoning the social life of the country. But Mihai does not want to get involved in politics and decides to engage only in painting. However, under the influence of friends fighting for the freedom of their homeland, Mihai realizes that he was wrong and becomes involved in a fierce political struggle against fascism.

It is late in the Ceausescu era in Romania, and Cristina is having a difficult time with her boyfriend. He wants her to have sex with him before he goes off to do his obligatory stint in the army. She wants him to marry her first. She also gets involved with a slightly rebellious actor, a would-be ladies' man. He has some vague plans to defect - could those be the reason he is receiving mysterious phone calls? Or are they the work of his anonymous admirer?

This Romanian dramatic comedy offers metaphorical commentary on life after Ceausescu's reign as it tells the story of a rural community turned topsy-turvy in their mad quest for the snails a prominent senator has requested for his dinner. The trouble begins when a rather imposing, pompous senator comes to visit a small rural Romanian town for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new hydro-electric dam. After he finishes his speech, the senator is accosted by a Swiss film crew eager to interview him. The senator is inordinately concerned with presenting a positive image of Romania to the world at large and so when he learns that he and the journalists are to stay at the same villa, does everything he came to make sure that they see nothing scandalous.

Mihai is expelled from college and sentenced to prison for a DUI accident. After his term in prison, he is hired at a construction site to be "re-educated"

While working on an in memoriam piece for a dead colleague, a famous news reporter loses track of the TV story and becomes part of a father-daughter relationship with the teenager left behind.

Being forced into prostitution by her father, she finds solace in her friends and her journal.

A young girl, who keeps trying unsuccessfully to get into college, wins a large sum at the Lottery. She goes to Bucharest, to find herself.

In the imaginary country of "Allergica", a group of gangsters have made a fat hit by pinning the blame on the Kid, who awaits execution in the terrible "Bing-Bing" prison. At the last moment the electric chair is unplugged because the lawyer has persuaded the doomed man to dictate his gangster memoirs for the use of the Books & Books publishing house. Its director offers him a "bonus to life" only if he plays along. But the Kid prefers to write about truth, people and love.