On the brink of revolution in 1989 Romania, six lives intersect amid protests and personal struggles, leading to the explosive fall of Ceausescu and the communist regime.
It is 20th December, 1989, and Romania's Securitate secret police officer Ionut is investigating counter-revolutionary elements at the student campus. He is particularly focused on Laurentiu, the son of Stefan, stage director at the national television.
The revolution that will bring dictator Nicolae Ceausescu down is already boiling, but on the surface, no one seems to speak about it. A protest in Timisoara has been violently suppressed by the army, yet the news give very scarce reports. At the TV station, Stefan is forced to find a solution to a problem: the New Year's special which has already been filmed features an actress who has just defected. He and the crew come up with the idea to find a similar looking actress and re-shoot the close-up.
She doesn't know about this yet, but it's going to be theatre actress Florina, who is in extreme distress as she can't reach her ex-boyfriend in Timisoara by telephone. In the meantime, we meet the factory worker Gelu as his foreman orders him to get a few co-workers and go to a certain address to help move some furniture.
There, in a big house set for demolition, lives Margareta, mother of Ionut. She hates that she has to be relocated to an apartment but her son is trying to convince her everything is going to be OK. For some reason, she wants Gelu to help her with fixing the windows against the drought.
Gelu's wife, a seamstress, has finished sewing a waterproof suit for Laurentiu, who is planning to defect to Yugoslavia with a pal by swimming across the Danube. He picks up the suit and later in the pharmacy crosses paths with Florina, who is desperate to get some Valium that is out of stock.
At home, Gelu's son tells his parents what he wrote to Santa Claus on his wish list. It includes his father's wish for "Uncle Nicu" (an affectionate term for Ceausescu) to die. The kid has already put the letter in the mailbox and Gelu panics: even though he is a good communist/proletarian, he is not immune to lack of food and heating, and as a prime example of a Romanian everyman, he certainly likes to vent his frustrations in front of the TV and his family. Can he stop the letter from reaching the all-seeing eyes of Securitate?
These intertwining stories reveal how both ordinary people and those on different levels of power become paranoid, lonely and isolated as the society is breaking down. In such an atmosphere, one firecracker in the hands of an unwitting revolutionary is enough to bring about the end of a regime.
