Adalbert's Dream

A work accident is re-enacted, but the re-enactment turns into a new accident

It's not just any day at the factory for our shady but somehow admirable hero Iulica (Gabriel Spahiu), Health and Safety Chief, but the morning after the glorious victory of underdogs Steaua Bucharest in the European Champions Cup over the mighty Barcelona - the only Romanian team ever to win it. Everyone, or at least the men, really wants to be celebrating this, but in fact it's Romanian Communist Party Day which is taking centre stage in the works canteen. Various lacklustre official events are on the cards, including a hilarious rendition of 'The Power of Love' by a stolid under-rehearsed factory choir, and a couple of official films Iulica's made, one a warning about the perils of disrespecting Health and Safety, the other the eponymous Adalbert's Dream, a clunky surreal effort, so named by Iulica 'because it sounds like a foreign film'. Always on the dodgy edge of things, ever cheerful, Iulica the family man is also managing a rather unenthusiastic one-eyed mistress (star of his H&S film) and getting the factory to run him off a few little items for personal use, as well as possessing a possibly illicit video recorder, which he's brought along to work to show the tape he's made of the football to his boss when the festivities allow. But the darkness really descends and the revels are ended when there's a real accident in the factory, and a 'reenactment' film has to be made about it to seek out where the blame lies and warn others. Just one week earlier the biggy in Health and Safety disasters happened, at Chernobyl.