Adi (40), a shy and introverted anthropologist, who got recently dumped by his girlfriend, moves to Ferentari, the poorest and most notorious neighborhood of Bucharest. He wants to write a study on manele music, the 'pop music' of the Roma community. Manele music serves as a way out of poverty for some successful musicians, but more often it's just another opportunity for the mafia pimps to make money off their acts and keep them in slave-like dependency. While researching this subject, Adi meets Alberto, a Roma ex-convict and a bear of a man, who promises Adi to help him. Soon enough, the unlikely pair begins a playful romance in which Adi feeds Alberto with improbable plans of escaping poverty, while Alberto feeds Adi with phrases of love. Little by little, their casual affair grows into love. And the funny and sweet teasing turns into something precarious, since Alberto is both dangerous and fragile and belongs to a world whose codes Adi doesn't understand.
As do many contemporary Romanian filmmakers, this originally Serb director plays an intriguing game with fact and fiction in her film, which is populated by amateur actors from Ferentari. Soldiers. Story from Ferentari is based on the eponymous, semi-autobiographical book by Adrian Schiop, who also plays the lead in this loose adaptation.
