A young boy is adopted by a priest and his wife during the Nazi occupation of Romania during the Second World War. He befriends the village idiot, who's despised by everyone else. When a German is killed in the last days of the war, the village is threatened with total destruction unless the murderer is handed over. The villagers decide to hand over the idiot.
Acting
Amza Pellea's idiot will break your heart
Direction
Nicolaescu builds dread through silence
Writing
The dinner scene: civility masking barbarism
Director
Sergiu Nicolaescu
Amza Pellea
Ipu
Cristian Șofron
Elev in vacanta
Ion Besoiu
Parintele Ioan
Gheorghe Dinică
Notar
Ioana Bulcă
Margareta
Octavian Cotescu
Doctorul Bunu
Iurie Darie
Ilegalist, fratele elevului
Ștefan Mihăilescu-Brăila
Plutonierul Gociman
Sergiu Nicolaescu
Colonel von Eck
Klára Sebők
Clara
Eugenia Bosânceanu
M-me Bunu
Eliza Petrăchescu
Fumegoaia
Ernest Maftei
Marcu
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Banned briefly in Romania for showing peasants as moral cowards rather than resistance heroes. The regime preferred partisan myths.
Amza Pellea, Romania's most beloved comedian, played the idiot so devastatingly that audiences couldn't look at him the same way again.
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