15

First time when my son brought home the CD with "15", we just had a look. And we reacted.

We saw the opening credits, with the long list of acknowledgements - and we laughed our asses off.

We saw the opening shot, with that ferris wheel - and we laughed our asses off.

We fast-forwarded to a scene where Maia Morgenstern is in a sewer and calls for someone - and we laughed our asses off.

We FF-ed even more, to some militiamen invading an apartment - and we laughed our asses off.

We switched at random, to find a scene self-pastiched from "Revansa" (some guy jumping from a bridge on a train carriage) - and we laughed our asses off.

...This was the first impact.

After a while, we gathered enough patience to sit down and watch all the movie. And we both reached to the same conclusion: It made no difference. Really none.

And we cried our eyes off.

It is said that those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to re-live them. This movie is about the mistakes of the past. It's one of the most dramatical movies I've ever seen. It's about the tragedy of one family during the bloody events that took place in Timisoara, Romania, in December 1989, that ended with the collapse of the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu and the death of 1100 people.

The movie is called 15, because the events took place over time, both in December 1989 and December 2004, when a Romanian journalist from a Parisian newspaper returns to Romania to write an article about the changes from the collapse of Ceausescu's regime, 15 years ago. She's in the search of a child told to have been born in the orthodox cathedral in Timisoara, in the days of the Revolution of 1989. The most scenes of the film take place in December 1989 and represent the drama of this boy's parents.

It definitely worth seeing.

Come on ! Everybody says this is a horrible-demented-terrible movie! It's not that bad. I've seen it recently and I have appreciated the twist in the script (Marinica dreams that he escapes from the "death truck"), the reconstruction of some areas in Timisoara, so that they should look like they were in 1989. Mihaela Radulescu is no good. The same for Daniela Nane. Romanian film goers are rushing to find fault with Sergiu these days, because he did some nasty things in the Commission for Film Projects the last years. Indeed, he's not a perfect fellow, but this film ain't that bad.

The ending is kind of silly, though...

It seems that 15 it's a film raising some very serious questions about how cinema may be a source of coping with our recent history. Is 15 - a film that evokes the days of the Romanian Revolution from December 1989 which led to the new achieved Romanian democracy - a good piece of cinema because it brings back those tragic moments? For me, this film is a failure. Not a complete failure, but still a failure. The film implies an emotional impact on those who know what the December '89 Revolution was all about: the journalist who comes, after 15 years, to Romania, to find a child who was born during those days, a journalist who is searching for the way Romanians dealt with the moment they gained their freedom. Unfortunately, the technique spoils this whole idea: the sound and the music are appalling, the dialogues are artificial, the shooting is dull. They really make this film un-watchable and make you wonder on the so-called "great Romanian directors"...

Not worth waisting to much time on this, i just have to say it's one of the worst movies I've seen( and I've seen my share of bad movies from Manos to Master of Disguise), and you should stay away unless you want to see how bad sergiu got in his old age... Kinda sad he's so lame and doesn't even know it... Pretty much the worst thing that ever happened to romanian movies

I know pretty much all his stuff is awful, but he outdone himself this time. I mean It's not even so bad it's funny it's... well just bad

PS I usually don't like to insult people online but whoever gave this one a 10 is either a retard or sergiu got 10 accounts and voted himself.