Politist, Adjectiv

Romania

Synopsis

Cristi is a policeman who refuses to arrest a young man who offers hashish to two of his school mates. “Offering” is punished by the law. Cristi believes that the law will change, he does not want the life of a young man he considers irresponsible to be a burden on his conscience. For his superior conscience has a totally different meaning…

Director's Statement

I wanted to make a film about language, about its meaning or, better yet, about its lack of meaning. Cristi is a cop enforcing a law made out of words. At a certain point, he’s afraid to solve a minor case out of fear he might have a young man’s life on his conscience. In Anghelache’s office – his superior – the meaning of the words changes via the dictionary. Behind the words, there’s the dictionary; in the past, behind the words there was God, but that’s a world my characters no longer have access to. The crime genre seduced me because, every time around, it involved you, the viewer; it was like a game of puzzle in which you were involved and which provoked you to foresee what was to come. In the end, all things would be clarified and everything made sense. Working on this film, I chose to look in an almost clinical way at a police procedural and the way in which cops react; I followed him around the same way he, in his turn, follows his suspects around, with the strong belief that the cinema is witness to a meaningless world.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Corneliu Porumboiu

Written by: Corneliu Porumboiu

Produced by: Marcela Ursu

Cinematography: Marius Panduru

Cast: Vlad Ivanov (Anghelache), Dragos Bucur (Cristi), Irina Saulescu (Anca), Ion Stoica (Nelu)

Nominations and Awards

  • Feature Film Selection 2009