Titi and Marius, two friends who fought together during the revolution of 1989, follow very different social and political paths in its aftermath.

Romania had it rough under its last communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and things are even rougher now. Before, their problems were oppression and poverty. Now, their problem is mostly poverty - and plenty of it. In this grim comedy (to call it a black comedy would be to paint too perky a picture of it), Vasile (Gheorghe Dinica)has a wife whom he's fond of, and a mistress, whom he's fonder of. He manages a nearly abandoned movie theater, and makes just about nothing doing it. When his wife announces she's pregnant, he nearly goes frantic trying to find money to get her an abortion. However, what truly sends him over the edge is when his mistress decides to become a prostitute because, after all, the money is good. These two situations send him straight to the loony bin, and when he gets out, he discovers that his wife has rented their apartment to pornographic filmmakers, and guess who's starring in them?

This Romanian dramatic comedy offers metaphorical commentary on life after Ceausescu's reign as it tells the story of a rural community turned topsy-turvy in their mad quest for the snails a prominent senator has requested for his dinner. The trouble begins when a rather imposing, pompous senator comes to visit a small rural Romanian town for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new hydro-electric dam. After he finishes his speech, the senator is accosted by a Swiss film crew eager to interview him. The senator is inordinately concerned with presenting a positive image of Romania to the world at large and so when he learns that he and the journalists are to stay at the same villa, does everything he came to make sure that they see nothing scandalous.

Director and screenwriter Mircea Daneliuc, with co-author Dinu Sararu, set this story of the peasants' resistence to land reform in the 1950s in Rumania against snatches of historical events that led up to this moment in time, and against the complicated individuals who were chosen by history to either carry out or defy the reforms. As has been said many times before, hindsight is always 20/20, which made it much easier to film this story with a balanced perspective three decades after the fact.

A television news team approaches a young woman for an interview. The woman’s reaction is so emotional and unexpected that the cameraman, Nelu (director Mircea Daneliuc), resolves to discover the reasons behind her tense, nervous outburst. Using a combination of fictional sequences and cinema vérité encounters with ordinary citizens, Microphone Test is about those moments of truth that shine through situations as controlled and ritualized as TV interviews—the moment when a crack appears in the social façade that reveals another kind of reality hidden just out of sight. Nelu becomes increasingly obsessed with this young woman and her world, and his search for understanding forces him to question his own past and the role of the media in shoring up political power.

The best workers from various factories in the communist system are rewarded a cruise on the Danube. The people in charge fight for bureaucratic reasons while the young ones are looking for adventure.