This modern tale ventures below the streets of Bucharest, Romania, to introduce us to five members of a “family” of orphaned, abandoned, or runaway children living in the Piata Victoriei subway station. With ages ranging from nine to midteens, the children beg and steal to buy food and Aurolac, which they sniff to get high. The intimate, cinema vérité style allows the children to speak for themselves with striking naturalness, revealing both the horrific conditions of their existence and their uninhibited, distinctive personalities. In this tough film, reminiscent of black-and-white reportage of the depression, first-time director Edet Belzberg, with a style that is immediate, candid, brutal, and deeply humanistic, tells a riveting, cruel tale of children in Romania at the turn of this millennium.
