Proud Heritage

The film takes up Mircea the Elder, ruler of Wallachia at the end of the fourteenth century. After 1394 Mircea has to make a choice. On one side is a military alliance with the Poles, on the other with the Ottomans. Both roads carry a heavy price and long consequences. The film tells that choice as the calculation of a head of state. The account comes from the historical epic vein of Romanian cinema of its time. Its point of view is national, and that frame is the film’s own. The hundred and thirty six minutes are spread over several years. Sergiu Nicolaescu both directed and acted, with Şerban Ionescu and Adrian Pintea also in the cast, in the Romanian film, completed in 1989.