Ovidiu Gorea is a jaded, mid-40s, high-school teacher and novice writer, still living with his parents. He has just published a collection of short stories called 'Nobody Dies For Free', that the bookstores reject because no one buys it. The high school principal asks him to deal with a problem-student, Robert. Ovidiu has Robert call one of his parents for talks, but the boy sends his sister, Diana, a gorgeous teenager, instead. Ovidiu is smitten. He convinces Diana to go on a date with him, but what he thinks will be a quiet evening over coffee turns into a bar-hopping binge that leaves him nearly broke. One night, he meets a shabby-looking drunk beggar who offers to recite poems in exchange for vodka. The two start talking and Ovidiu learns that the guy makes two or three times more money than him in a month out of this. He asks for an explanation and the beggar refers him to the Filantropica Foundation. Located in a desolate basement, the Filantropica Foundation is actually the lair of Bucharest's beggars' leader, Pavel Puiuţ. A former convict, he realized that begging leads nowhere "unless there is a touching story behind the hand that begs", so he created an organized network of beggars, each with an invented, tear-jerking, background story that yields millions. Puiuţ listens to Ovidiu's story and thinks he is perfect for his new "project". |