Protagonists

After introducing the main character, Ana Ionescu-Aslan, Bunica leads the viewer to other figures, other lives, other realities.
 

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Portrait Elena IvanusElena Ivanus, mail carrier

Has worked as a mail carrier for years, lives with her husband and two children in Bucharest. During the revolution she delivered telegrams and was repeatedly caught between the battling sides. Today she is disappointed by the fact that her life has changed little since the revolution.

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Portrait Gelu Voican-VoiculescuGelu Voican-Voiculescu,
revolutionary and co-organizer of the execution

Writer and geologist, dissident during Ceaucescu’s reign. He became a central figure of the revolution of ’89 by organizing the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu and then serving as vice-prime minister under the first post-Communist president, Iliescu. In the years afterward he disappeared from the political scene and is now Romania’s ambassador to Tunisia.

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Portrait Costel GramadaCostel Gramada, cabin steward

Twenty-seven years old, he had to drop out of college due to a lack of funds. He now spends eight months of every year working nonstop on an American cruise ship which sails between the continental USA and Alaska. He saves the money he has earned over the past several years to purchase an apartment. But the original owner, from whom it was confiscated 50 years ago, is demanding its return.

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Portrait Alexandrou PaleologuAlexandrou Paleologu,
writer and politician

Now a member of parliament he spent five years in prison during Ceaucescu’s reign. After the revolution he publicly admitted to having spied for the Securitate. Despite his advanced age he supports Romania’s budding democracy. In Bunica he faces a passer-by who angrily demands justice.

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Familie AlteisensammlerGreaga family, scrap-iron collectors

This Roma family roams Bucharest every day, collecting scrap iron, everything from pots and pans to old cars. For this the large family earns about three euros a day. A recent ban prohibits them from driving their horse-drawn wagon through the city’s main streets - which represents a considerable threat to their existence. In Bunica they have a heated debate with Ana Ionescu and other passers-by - during which two different worlds collide.

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BauernfamilieMaria, Iulian and Nicolette, farmers

For generations this family has sold the crops they grow in their fields to Bucharest. After the land was confiscated by the Communist regime, they began to work at a factory. They now farm their land again. The viewer is taken to a countryside 50 kilometers from Bucharest where horse-drawn wagons rule the roads. Their greatest wish is a small tractor.

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Portrait Anca KosoveanuAnca Kosoveanu, retired engineer

Formerly the head agricultural specialist at the farmers’ cooperative in Berceni. Now privately owned, its farmers have formed a cooperative according to the Communist model. The greenhouses with the missing roofs are evidence of the revolution of ‘89, when the local farmers declared the glass to be their private property and took it home.

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Portrait Gheorghe TartacutaGheorghe Tartacuta,
engineer at the FAUR works, Bucharest

Considers himself part of the old generation of Communist factory workers. The FAUR works in Bucharest has been one of the most important steelworks in Europe since the 20s. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain the buyers have all but disappeared, and just a few employees now work in the cavernous buildings. Locomotives were once manufactured here, but now they are deadly silent.