One cannot properly assess discourses on social misery in recent Eastern Euro-pean cinema without first taking note of the fact that filmic depictions of them are disproportionately scarce compared to the extent of the phenomenon itself. Keeping in mind that countries like Romania and Bulgaria constantly topped European statistics on poverty risk throughout the past two decades, it is striking how few of the local films directly tackle social issues as their central concern. At least in regard to Romania, this certainly applies to the earlier cinematic productions of the communist period, as well as to the hazy decade of transition and the more recent post-transition period, both for fiction films and documentaries.
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