Between 1985 and 1987, American journalist Edward Serotta photographed communist Romania, unaware that the Securitate secret police were secretly photographing him in turn. Forty years later, Radu Jude and Adrian Cioflâncă bring the two photographic archives together, creating a strange and ironic dialogue between the gazes of the observer and the observed. The film explores historical memory, surveillance, and the question of whether it is ever possible to construct an objective picture of the past.