The Unsaved (2013)

The Unsaved is a drama about about a Sancho Panza and not a Don Quijote. It's about the every day's non-hero facing circumstances and not adventures, it's about Viorel, a 25-year-old fledgling drug dealer, from a backwater little town in the contemporary Republic of Moldova. He lives at home with his mother, his ears get red when he's nervous and he lets his days pass in the usual "laissez-faire" Moldavian style. He gets involved through his best friend, Goose, in small-time drug dealing, while helping him to fly a hang glider that never seems to work properly; and he falls in love with Maria, the girl who happens to cut his hair. This easy-going existentialism precipitates several possibilities, which find our hero trapped in his own indecisiveness, so finally he reckons the moment has come for him to start growing up and act like an adult. The first thing he does is get a job peeling potatoes in the police canteen in order to make his mother proud. The second thing is to quit the drug dealing and become a serious man, but not before stealing a car engine to "tune" Goose's hang glider or delivering some drugs in his place. The third thing as an adult is to develop a serious relationship with a young woman, Maria, who is the lover of a drug dealer in jail, and at the same time a cop's mistress of convenience. All these attempts fail to lead him to the desired state of "adulthood", and our man-boy becomes less and less a hero, and more of a man just trying to get by. Cornered by the cops, Viorel exchanges his freedom for his best friend. He chooses not to fight for Maria and lets her go back to her cruel lover who gets out of prison. In the end, left all alone, he sees himself faced only with a dream, Goose's broken hang glider. The naivety he brought to stealing as in loving, the persistent urge to find the meaning of life through others, the careless way in letting the hours pass by, and finally the choice of believing that flying means only falling, are just few of the little dramas that turn the prosaic poetry of this story into a liberation struggle of the day to day life.