Romanian film “A fost sau n-a fost” hits US theaters on Wednesday, the second Romanian film that manages to enter the American market in several years, after “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”. With a strong advertising campaign, director Corneliu Porumboiu’s film will be distributed in US theaters under the official English name of “12:08 East of Bucharest”.

At the Film Forum in Manhattan, the film will have six runs daily and movie goers will also receive copies of another film by Porumboiu, “Visul lui Liviu” (Liviu’s Dream).

A first run of the film in New York two months ago got favorable reactions among US film critics who called it a comedy in East-European traditional humor, delicate, but sharp as a knife”.

And a review of the film was published by New York Times on Sunday, saying that Porumboiu celebrates Balkan humor as a weapon of survival.

The film is centered around a debate at the TV station of a small Romanian city where the moderator tries to establish whether local people took to the streets in the December 1989 revolution, before the flight of ex-dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife from a rally in Bucharest.