Emil Lotyanu is one of Moldavia's most acclaimed poets, and a film director since the early sixties. The Lautars (1972) is an extraordinary epic set in the 19th century, telling of the lives of starving, persecuted musicians, known as Lautars, who roamed Moldavia singing about the joys and hardships of life and the beauty of the land. The film focuses on one such musician, an old man, Toma Alistar, and one of the last of the tribe; when we meet him, he is attempting to outwit the Czar's tax collectors by playing dead. His memories form the flashback story of the film, a lyrical tale of young love foiled by the exigencies of a musician's life. Laika is the girl he adores as a youth, before being sent abroad as a music teacher to a Russian count in Germany. On returning to Moldavia he learns that Laika has married a Hungarian gypsy and disappeared. For twenty years he searches for her but to no avail. As the film moves back into the present tense, the Czar's hussars again appear, hungry for taxes. But this time the old musician is not merely playing dead. Shortly thereafter, a band of Hungarian gypsies passes through; among them is an elderly, pipe-smoking woman....