During the summer of 1937, Emanuel, a young man in his early twenties, is committed to a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast for treatment of his bone tuberculosis. The treatment consists of painful spine punctures that confine him to a plaster on a stretcher-bed. Little by little, as Emanuel gets accustomed to the sadness of his new life, he discovers that inside the sanatorium there is still a life to be lived to the fullest.
Direction
Jude's static frames turn suffering into living paintings.
Cinematography
Boxy Academy ratio traps you in Emanuel's plaster prison.
Writing
Blecher's wit survives adaptation: sex jokes in a tuberculosis ward.
Director
Radu Jude
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in the actual sanatorium where Max Blecher spent his final years, now abandoned.
The 1937 setting places these Jewish characters months before Romania's fascist turn and the Holocaust.
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