Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man

Overview

When the Soviet Army marched into Romania in 1944, a part of the Romanian population went “into the mountains” – a diverse assortment of nationalists and fascists, liberals, apolitical farmers and members of the middle-class, who were affected by the Communists’ expropriations. Over a thousand armed resistance groups took refuge in the inaccessible forests of the Carpathian Mountains where they waited in vain for the support of the Western Allies. One of them was led by Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu, who managed to remain undetected until 1976 when he was arrested. This film depicts the daily existence of this group. It tells the story of a struggle that became an end in itself, as the enemy was constantly in pursuit and arrest meant torture and often liquidation. Hungry and emotionally withdrawn, the group of young men got entangled in a partisan war that could not be won, lost in the landscape of the South Carpathians, accompanied by a vigilant secret police, the Securitate.

Cast

Constantin Diţă

Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu

Ionuţ Caras

Gheorghe Haşiu

Catalin Babliuc

Ion Chiujdea

Ion Bechet

Nelu Novac

Vasile Calofir

Andrei Haşiu

Constantin Lupescu

Ion Ilioi

Dan Bordeianu

Victor Metea

Alexandru Potocean

Toma Pirău

N/A

Alin Mihalache

Gheorghe Şovăială

Radu Iacoban

Gelu Novac

Bogdan Dumitrache

Laurian Hasiu - Leu

N/A

Bogdan Dumitrescu

Jean Pop - Fileru