Eastern Business

Two friends in Moldova try one business idea after another in search of the money that would change their lives. One is a mild-mannered music teacher who sells off almost everything he owns so that he can marry his fiancée; the other talks him into the next opportunity every time. Igor Cobileanski’s second feature shapes this run of failures as a black comedy and a road movie. What it is really about is not the difficulty of starting a business but how hard it is to imagine a future for yourself in a country left at the edge of Europe. It manages that without asking for pity, and stays funny through most of it. Shot as a Romanian-Lithuanian co-production, it premiered at the Transilvania festival in June 2016, with Ion Sapdaru and Constantin Pușcașu in the leads.