Shōhei Imamura was walking away from the film set, deep in thought. Something had been weighing heavy on his mind the past few days. What is a human being? Everyone was sitting stock still, not knowing what to expect. The day had already been hard, the resulting atmosphere making them weary with visceral discomfort. When he returned, his gaze to the floor, he told them politely: you're not credible, we have to do it over again. Skin pruned and pickled, they filmed the scene again. It wasn't for nothing, Black Rain won an Academy Award.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Ciucașu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In January 2023, the group has 10,220 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
