With actors Alexandru Papadopol and nca-Ioana Androne
Occident is a Romanian film released in 2002, and directed by Cristian Mungiu. It stars Alexandru Papadopol as a 29-year old man named Luci and Anca Androne as his wife Sorina. The film is a tragicomedy about young people who move to the West when they can not make ends meet in Romania.
This film is a bitter comedy about the people who want to emigrate from Romania, and about those who stay behind. The movie has a rich, interesting structure: there are three different stories – a weeklong in the film – that cross, interconnect and happen in the same period. The characters influence each others lives, sometimes even without knowing. Main characters from one story become secondary characters in another story. At the same time, scenes from the first part of the movie bring unexpected facts when seen the second or the third time. The stories do not have just one ending: the first story ends in each of the third parts in a different point, suggesting radically different solutions for the characters. The way in which the director fits time and links events together often produces thematically unexpected results.
