Scarred Hearts Romania, Germany 2016 | 141 min | OV with English subtitles | Colour | FF 2016

Romania, 1937. Emanuel, in his early 20s, suffers from bone tuberculosis and lives in a sanatorium by the Black Sea. He spends his time in a plaster bed and is pushed around by the staff. Surrounded by medical equipment bordering on the grotesque and trapped in a body that is slowly falling apart, Emanuel, like most of his fellow patients, is filled with a lust for life. Bodily out of commission but cerebrally all the more lively, they conduct alert, intellectual and political discussions. And as the Second World War looms,  Emanuel falls in love. With surreal aspects and a lot of black humour, the film plays with motifs from the eponymous autobiographical novel by Romanian author Max Blecher, who after ten years of suffering died aged 29.