Next Stop Paradise

Mitu and Elena meet at a vodka drinking contest. Mitu is about to go into the army; Elena is being married off to a man she does not want. Neither is reconciled to the life in front of them, and each sees a way out in the other. But the road they choose puts them in front of the state almost at once: the barracks, the police, the hospital, the court. In nineties Romania all of these still run on the old habits and take no interest in what two young people want. The film is not about their love but about how it gets crushed. Lucian Pintilie directs the Romanian film; ninety-nine minutes, with Costel Cașcaval as Mitu and Dorina Chiriac as Elena, and Victor Rebengiuc and Răzvan Vasilescu in the cast. Pintilie spent forty years working both in Romania and in exile from it.