Men of Deeds

ILIE, almost 40-year-old, is the police chief of a small village in the Northern Romania, close to the border with Ukraine. Although suspicious things are happening in the village, with the mayor and the priest being part of a cigarette smuggling network, Ilie has specialized in seeing only what suits him best: when the mayor makes him guard the place where the smuggling takes place, Ilie’s naively convincing himself nothing happens over there. But Ilie makes a mistake and this is the beginning of his narrowing world, because the moment he gets involved actively in the events, he can no longer overlook things. And it's not only about cigarette smuggling anymore. A murder takes place. In just a few days, Ilie's life faces a radical change. His illusions are shattered. In a vacuum of solutions, he tries to be what he has never been before - the justice seeker who arrests everyone. Unfortunately, this turns into a clumsy massacre with shovels and axes and firearms from which no one survives.

Director’s statement:

Northern Romania, where the story is settled, is a strongly patriarchal society, as most of the Eastern Europe is. Men are told since childhood how they have to behave and what is their goal in life: they have to be strong, to dominate, to be winners. Men are not allowed to cry. They must marry a wife and have children, provide and protect their family. ILIE isn’t like that at all. He failed in all these. He failed at having a family, he is a mediocre policeman who always runs away from conflicts, he is dominated by the people around him and when he finally gets a subordinate against which he tries to act as a superior, he only manages to be pathetic. And that wouldn't be such a problem if he wouldn't consider himself a looser. But he does feel like that, as he knows nothing about being a real man. When I realized this, not only I understood Ilie in a critical way, but it also gave me a more detached perspective of idiosyncratic manhood and this is something that interests me a lot.