Very early in the morning, Marian, a 7-year-old boy from a small Romanian village, wakes up his father and persuades him to go to the city to fix their old TV set. The father and son begin carrying the TV set there, hoping they will find Bichescu, a specialist, who will fix their problem.

Taking the film-festival world by storm upon its release, Radu Jude’s outstanding debut short roams through the muddy roads of rural Romania. Tender in parts yet never straying into sentimentalism, this snapshot of a father-son bond inhabits the realities of poverty with a matter-of-fact clarity.