‘Opening Balkan Trafik’

In 1937, Emanuel (a very game Lucian Teodor Rus) is diagnosed with bone tuberculosis (or Pott’s disease) and is confined to Carmen Sylva, a marine sanatorium near the Black Sea. After the head doctor gleefully removes a pus-filled abscess while puffing on a cigarette, Emanuel is soon encased in a heavy body cast, and must spend all of his hours confined to his bed. A highly intelligent young man in hise early twenties with a penchant for quoting poetry and philosophy, Emanuel tries to live life to its fullest in this Magic Mountain-like setting – keeping up his good humour, arguing over politics with blithe anti-Semites and falling in love with Solange, a recovered former patient sporting a leg brace – but is it only a matter of time until he, like many other of his fellow patients, becomes resigned to his arbitrary fate?