Undeva la Palilula (2012)

In 1960s Romania, Serafim, a young doctor, is assigned temporarily to the hospital in Palilula after the death of its former pediatrician, Uncle Pantelică. When he arrives in the isolated little town, the doctor discovers a world that operates by its own rules, somewhere between reality, dreams, and the absurd. At the hospital, the patients are almost perfectly healthy and watch the dissections performed in the morgue as if they were shows. Doctors and patients drink, party, and talk about life and death, seeming unconcerned with the institution’s real purpose. Elsewhere in town, residents spend their time at the oleander-lined terrace, at the Boema Hotel, or at endless parties, in an atmosphere that is at once cheerful, grotesque, and melancholic. At first, Serafim watches people’s behavior in amazement and tries to keep his wits about him. Gradually, however, he is drawn into their existence, dominated by alcohol, excess, fantastic events, and strange rituals. The young doctor slowly abandons the bearings of the world he came from and becomes part of the Palilula community. The town seems completely isolated from history. Political changes, communist demonstrations for the “struggle for peace,” fires, floods, and the deaths of some characters do not fundamentally alter the residents’ lives. Even ceremonies imposed by the regime are turned into occasions for mockery, drunkenness, and spectacle. Time does not move in a natural way, and the seasons and years seem to blur together. Toward the end, the world of Palilula begins to disintegrate. The characters disappear, die, or melt into their own stories, and it becomes impossible to distinguish memory from reality. Serafim remains bound to this universe, realizing that the experience he had there has changed him forever.