The surprisingly hilarious Romanian film 12:08 East of Bucharest

The Romanian film 12:08 East of Bucharest (2016, Cormeliu Porumboiu [had to look that one up]) is a dark and unexpectedly hilarious comedy about a single call-in talk show broadcast in a small city in Romania. The host of the show has selected for his topic an examination of the day that the totalitarian Communist government/police state was overthrown and the question - apparently quite controversial, at least in this film and this city - as to whether local activists held a demonstration before the overthrow or merely poured into the streets to join the throng after the overthrow. The show itself, though apparently on local TV, seems much more like the old days of public-access TV in the U.S., with extremely poor production and virtually no audience. The host, after much struggle in the first half of the movie to get assurances that his guests will show at the studio!, gets for his panel 2 guys: One is the supposed leader of the pre-overthrow demonstrations, a sad sack of a guy w/ major drinking and debt problems. As the show rolls along, various callers denounce the guy as an imposter and insist that the city square was empty the whole morning (in fact until after 12:08, the time of the capitulation); the guy keeps insisting that he led a dangerous demonstration, but hes pretty much crushed by the end of the broadcast. The other guest is an old curmudgeon who actually says very little but pretty much steals the show with his glowering and fidgeting (throughout the broadcast he seems to be folding notepaper into paper boats). At the end, nobody's any the wiser, and the film ends with a look at some of the pathetic  public housing in this city in the midst of a slushy winter storm.The message beneath the subtle comedy (and commentary) seems to be: Is life any better in a "free" country? Does it really matter who was the first to demonstrate for freedom? We get a sense that there are many old wounds and resentments, and this weird talk-show is something like a public airing of long-stranding grievances and jealousies - but to what end? Isn't it better to move on and look to the future?