From the Barricade to the Truth

Dalles Hall Bucharest

June 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM

On December 21, 1989, a few hundred Bucharest residents, generally young people and very young people, bravely demonstrated at the barricade in University Square against the communist regime, which had been in power for 45 years in Romania. Dozens of them were shot then, in that place, by the communist repression forces.

Most of the survivors of that dramatic day continued the protest actions, trying to stop the hijacking of the revolution by the authors of the coup of December 22, represented at the top by the tandem Ion Iliescu – Petre Roman and the "National Salvation Front" (FSN) Council.

The culmination of their anti-communist struggle was the great demonstration in University Square (April-May 1990), strongly supported by the students and youth from Bucharest and all over the country.

Two of the demonstrators from December 21, 1989, present throughout this period in University Square, were   Dragoș Vasile Pâslaru, actor of the Nottara Theater, founder of the "21 December" association, and Marian Teofan Dragoș Munteanu, member of the same association but also leader of the Students' League. They would then be arrested and tortured on June 14, 1990, on the verge of being killed by the neo-communist governmental forces  under the coordination of the FSN. Seriously injured, they ended up in a coma in the hospital and in prison, their survival being a true miracle. 

After 35 years, the former actor, now monk Valerian Pâslaru, answers the questions of the anthropologist Marian Munteanu, resulting in a moving and clarifying mutual confession. The experiences of that time are remembered and elucidated from the perspective of the experience later accumulated by the two interlocutors in the decades spent on such different paths, but which will prove, in the depths of their calling, complementary.

From the Barricade to Truth

Elucidations of the hieromonk Valerian Pâslaru

in dialogue with the anthropologist Marian Munteanu

Documentary made in April-May 2025 by a team made up of former members of the Students' League of the University of Bucharest

Directed by: Ruxandra Țuchel

 Director of Photography: Silviu Andrei

Editing and Graphics: Gabriela Burcea

Collaborated: Rafael Udriște

Documentary images were taken from the mass media/youtube and from the personal archive of Mr. Marian Munteanu

A production of S 80 MEDIA

© StudioS 80, SRL, Bucharest, 2025