Trailer

SYNOPSIS: When Claudiu Crulic, a young Romanian in Poland, was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, he became a pawn in a Kafkaesque miscarriage of justice and went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment in jail. Anca Damian’s documentary is by turns chilling and heartbreaking, and also ironic, with black humour forcing through.

Crulic himself “narrates” the film posthumously, his words voiced by Vlad Ivanov, star of such Romanian New Wave titles as Police, Adjective and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days—but what makes this extraordinary documentary even more compelling is its strong visual style: Damian uses handdrawn, cutout, and collage animation techniques to create a strikingly memorable film

“Technically a documentary, this brilliant medley of animation and cutouts, with slivers of live action tossed in, is creative interpretation at its most sublime. Crulic has a distinctly Eastern European dry humor, manifest in the drawings and in the rapid, highly detailed voiceovers (mostly in Romanian, with a few observational points made in English)…. Telling a tragic true story with almost lighthearted animation techniques is a brilliant choice that pays off.” Howard Feinstein, Filmmaker

“Lean, astute… the variety of animation techniques – hand-drawn, cutout, stop-motion, and collage – indelibly convey the bureaucratic horrors the young man faced.” Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

“Visually stunning… Magnificent.” Anja Savic, Vancouver Weekly

Filmmakers
Anca Damian – Scriptwriter & Director
Vlad Ivanov- Narrators
Jame Sives – Narrator