Synopsis
Foreword: Four seniors from Bucharest look back on their professional journeys — from the dreams of their youth to their daily work and the meaning they now give to their past.
Directed by: Andra Tarara
Script by: Andra Tarara
Cast: Marin Vișan, Maria Țanea, Ioan Cojocaru, Paul Hera
Producer: Ruxandra Simion (Asociația Rhea)
Editing: Andra Tarara
Sound: Laurențiu Coțac
Year: 2025
Category: Feature film
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 26 minutes
2,225 – Cinepub viewers
PLOT SUMMARY
Through interviews and old photographs, the film traces how personal choices intersect with social circumstances, shaping each person’s understanding of the world.
TRIVIA:
- The film was born out of the Past/Present project, a creative initiative dedicated to seniors in District 6, which challenged them to transform their life memories into a cinematic experience.
- Andra Tarara (b. 1994, Giurgiu) is a filmmaker, video artist, and photographer with a background in film and anthropology.
- Her best-known project, the feature-length documentary Us Against Us, made together with her father, explores their relationship through an open dialogue about the mental illness that has marked their lives. The film was named Best Romanian Film at the 2021 Astra Film Festival and has been screened in cinemas, schools, hospitals, and rehabilitation centers as part of efforts to combat the stigmatization of mental illness.
- Currently (December 2025), she is working on Interbelic Explosive (The Goldstein Files), a hybrid documentary written and directed together with David Schwartz, which reconstructs the life of Max Goldstein, a young anarchist involved in a bomb attack on the Romanian Senate in 1920. At the same time, she collaborates with the Political Theater Platform and works as an archivist at the Image Archive of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
- The director’s filmography consists of: A Death in My Family (short documentary, 2018); August 23, 1944/2019 (feature-length documentary, co-directed with David Schwartz and Roland Ibold, 2019); A Shovel and a Trowel (video poem, 2019); The Land That Never Sleeps (short fiction film, co-directed with David Schwartz, part of the omnibus Journey Around the House in 60 Days, 2020); Us Against Us (feature-length documentary, 2020); A Series of Thoughts on Memory (short documentary, 2022).
LINES:
• “I applied to film school and that’s what I’m doing. At least for now. Today.” – Andra Tarara
• “I’m here with my cousin and my math teacher, Uță.”
• “I wanted to be a police officer. (…) Back then, they didn’t call it bullying. Others made fun of us (…) I wanted justice, that’s why I wanted to be a police officer.
• “I liked theater (…), then hairdressing, manicures, I wanted to be a painter. I also did typing, so I was versatile.”
• “I wanted to be a painter and I applied to a polygraphic high school.”
• “I applied to high school and they rejected me at the medical examination because of my eyes.”
• “When I decided to move on, I decided on my own, because my parents didn’t have time to discuss it.”
• “We worked on Saturdays and Sundays…”
• “There was a lot of work in construction because they were building non-stop.”
• “Metrorex paid well, it was good.”
• “I cried when they killed Ceaușescu.
ARTICLES:
- Face to face with Andra Tarara – docuart.ro
- Andra Tarara – icr.ro
- Andra Tarara – aarc.ro
- Andra Tarara: “It’s emotionally costly to make documentaries about relationships within your own family” – filmsinframe.com
- Andra Tarara’s debut feature film, Noi împotriva noastră (Us Against Us), premiered at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival – radioromaniacultural.ro
- Us Against Us, best film in the Romania Section at the Astra Film Festival – rri.ro
- Us Against Us (2021) – aarc.ro
