- A middle-aged couple gets settled in an isolated house, on a barely accessible mountain ridge. Ana's health condition led to this change of lifestyle, and the couple tries to cope with this new situation.
- A middle-aged couple gets settled in an isolated house, on a barely accessible mountain ridge. Ana and Filip, two highly educated persons (she is an actress and an on-air weather presented for the most important TV station in Romania; he is a professional photographer with a well-established portfolio) who have lived their entire lives in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, buy a shabby household on the heights of the Retezat National Reserve (in the Meridional Carpathian mountains) and they are about to start a new life in extremely demanding conditions (not having access to running water or to the electrical power grid). The movie begins by introducing the time spent by this couple trying to adjust themselves to the new living conditions while surrounded by an astonishing mountainous landscape. Ana and Filip divide among them the chores of the household (decorating their home, transporting water by a mule, chopping wood etc.), while maintaining their high spirits, focused on the positive side of a new lifestyle. Their relation, which goes back a long time ago, with the inherent mix of fulfilments and failures, gets gradually untangled, as they meet people coming from outside: the former owners of the house, two old people with a surprising life story; friends from Bucharest who are paying short visits, thus underlining the contrast between the old and the current world; travellers, passing-by on their way to a nearby hermitage. The viewer discretely discovers that Ana decided to move away from Bucharest after being diagnosed with an extremely serious condition, that she decides to deal with by radically changing her lifestyle, instead of the classical interventions (surgery, chemotherapy etc.). Filip, who initially seemed to be determined to respect Ana's choice, is gradually trying to convince her to go back to Bucharest in order to make use of the conventional medical solutions. Ana fiercely rejects such an option. On this background, their relation becomes ever more tense, as long intervals of time emerge when communication between the two of them dissipates almost until nothing is left behind. At a certain point in time, during the harshest months of winter, after an open conflict with Ana, Filip packs everything and leaves for Bucharest. Left alone, while concealing even to herself the yet inconspicuous symptoms of the illness, Ana continues her everyday activities, covering also the chores that had been previously performed by her husband. After a while, Filip comes back to the mountain home. As he does not find Ana, he starts chopping wood. As the evening falls, Ana returns from a trip up on the mountain, but the moment when she notices Filip's presence, she chooses not to come any closer to the house, remaining a few hundred feet away. Filip notices Ana's taking distance. This is the story of a new Beginning. The beginning of a new search. The beginning of some brand new, parallel, unripe worlds, emerging from the disintegration of the old one.
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