One of the rare features recently emerging from Romania’s neighboring country, Carbon is a black comedy and powerful political indictment born entirely out of a picaresque road trip. A young Moldovan man, lured by the cynical promise of a free flat, and his Afghan war veteran sidekick set off for the Transnistrian front in the 90s, only to stumble upon an anonymous, charred corpse. Their simple, noble quest—to identify the body and grant it a proper burial—collides with sheer bureaucratic failure: every authority figure they encounter—military commanders, the mayor, the local doctor and priest—proves more incompetent and ‘burnt-out’ than the deceased. Hauling their macabre cargo on a tractor-powered odyssey, the two protagonists become the improbable moral center of a morally bankrupt world. Ion Borș has crafted a bitter yet profoundly humane farce, a savagely ironic look at a society in freefall where rules evaporated faster than Soviet promises.
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