The extraordinary renaissance of the Romanian cinema - served notice by Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr Lazarescu last year and culminating this year in a well-deserved Palme d'Or at Cannes for Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days - is the result of three different filmmakers hurdling almost insurmountable odds to produce exceptional films.

Corneliu Poromboiu's drama is perhaps the least of the three, but is still good value as winner of the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes in 2006. It harks back to the fateful day when the whole country watched live on television as angry crowds forced the dictator Ceausescu to flee Bucharest by helicopter.

In a small provincial town east of the capital, the owner of a local TV station (Teodor Corban) invites two guests to share their own memories of the glorious moment.

One is an alcoholic and debtridden history teacher (Ion Sapdaru) who claims he went into the town's main square to storm the town hall before anyone else. The other is an retired man (Mircea Andreescu) who is hauled onto the programme just as he was about to play Santa Claus for a local school.

Viewers are invited to comment, and with one voice they suggest that the teacher is lying and the old man a gullible fool: there was no revolution east of Bucharest - and it wasn't safe to shout "Down with Ceausescu" there for a good while after his downfall.

12.08 East from Bucharest is funny, eccentric and a wonderful testimony to the selectivity and frequent hypocrisy of memory. Its performances are eyecatching and its portrait of a provincial town where nothing much happens, and what does is often absurd, is ironic without being unsympathetic.

The only problem with the new Romanian cinema seems to be titles few can easily remember - but some eccentricity is permissible when the films are so good.