Pioneers' Palace

Directed by Bobby Păunescu

Set in Bucharest after the fall of Ceaușescu, Pioneers' Palace captures the chaotic essence of the time. Based on the director's own experience, the story follows a group of Romanian teenagers who, driven by the unprecedented freedoms of a free-market economy, open a disco in their high school. Surrounded by entrepreneurial opportunity and almost no limits, the teens visit Bucharest’s first-ever brothel and are exposed to the dark underbelly of an unregulated society when they are faced with potential exposure to AIDS.