Good acting, a good sound track and good filming should be enough to make an important film. It is not the case for "Octav".No need for a spoiler alert, since there's nothing to spoil: an old man, played by an actor who bears a keen resemblance to the director's father, music conductor Sergiu Celibidache, returns to his family's recently recovered home, in order to sell it, which he does. Period. Nothing new in superposing temporary plans, in the flash backs, or the reference to the war, without any connection or implication for the protagonist's life. Apart from the memories of lost childhood, which any of us would have when confronted with such a strong symbol as the house they lived in, there is no deeper incursion or explanation of anything in the protagonist's life; just images which are meant to imply the quality of life and origin of that family- an obvious reference to the film director... Even the children in the film are unconvincing and artificial in their acting. The script writers seem to have never heard parents talking to their children, otherwise the dialogues between Octav as a 9-10 years old and his parents wouldn't be so unconvincing and wouldn't sound so untrue! Boring and unconvincing, "Octav" appears to have sprung solely from the director's ambition to prove something about his own origins. Not enough to make this film remotely good. A special mention goes to Blue, the Border Collie trained by Bruno Icobet and to the fact that, though a Romanian film, no one in it eats soup in a tiled kitchen!