location essential to movie meaning
There seems to be confusion on the whole meaning of the movie, stemming from confusion on location within Romania, probably due to the English-language title.
The location of the movie is Vaslui, a very small provincial town on the eastern border of Romania (quite far from Bucharest, which is far south; the distance between the 2 is of hundreds of kilometers). Vaslui is the director's home town.
The question the writer/director poses was whether there was a revolution in '89 *in Vaslui*. There is no doubt there was one in Bucharest (or Timisoara). For background, the Romanian revolution was quite bloody, far from a velvet one, featuring tens of thousands in the streets, barricades, snipers, armored vehicles and many deaths within Bucharest and Timisoara especially. It ended with a dictator fleeing from the top of his building by helicopter and a firing squad for him at the end.
The movie questions none of that (thus all comments about the movie arguing for a 'velvet revolution' are somewhat misplaced). His question is whether what we understand as a 'revolution' happens down to smaller, distant towns of a country (or layers of society) and how soon people that are *not* in the first 'line of fire' adapt to, acknowledge or actually participate in major changes. One can speculate a lot, but this main meaning of the movie was confirmed several times by the author himself in interviews and such. In addition to that, perhaps it's a commentary on post-revolution Romania as well IMO.