NEIDENTIFICAT / UNIDENTIFIED
Friday, June 10, 7:00 pm
Miracle Theatre
535 8th St SE, Washington, DC 20003
Director: Bogdan George Apetri, 2020, subtitles, 123 minutes
Followed by a Q&A with director Bogdan George Apetri and actor Bogdan Farcaș
A small city in north Romania. Despite growing debts and an entangled personal life, Florin Iespas, a police detective, is determined to solve a hard case no one seems to care about. Ordered to put down the file, the cop continues his off-the-record investigations, soon turning up a strong lead for two hotel fires that resulted in several deaths. The suspect is Bănel, a security guard of Roma descent, but he denies everything. Faced with the refusal of the Police Chief to support his inquiry, the mistrust of his colleagues, and his own inner demons, the cop is forced to come up with a convoluted plan and take extraordinary measures in order to bring it to its inevitable conclusion. Under the appearance of a sharp, tightly woven detective movie, the film is a story that speaks on issues in the police system, power abuse, sexism, masculinity and prejudice.
Bogdan George Apetri is a Romanian filmmaker based in New York. A former lawyer in his native country, he moved to the US, where he graduated from Columbia University with a dual MFA degree, in Film Directing and Cinematography. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the same university. This is the second film directed by Bogdan George Apetri, who adapted the original screenplay written by the actor Iulian Postelnicu. The director also produced and edited the film. NEIDENTIFICAT/UNIDENTIFIED is the first film in a planned trilogy using the same fictional universe and shot in the director’s hometown of Piatra Neamț (northeastern Romania) and its surroundings. Actor Bogdan Farcaș has his first leading role in a feature film. Ana Ularu, one of the most famous Romanian actresses, who starred in the debut feature of Bogdan George Apetri, PERIFERIC/OUTBOUND (2010), has a cameo in NEIDENTIFICAT/UNIDENTIFIED. Emanuel Pârvu, who plays a short part, would be the leading actor, playing the same character, in the second part of the trilogy, MIRACOL/MIRACLE (2021). The two feature films, NEIDENTIFICAT/UNIDENTIFIED and MIRACOL/MIRACLE, were actually shot back-to-back in Piatra Neamț in the summer of 2019. The film’s director of photography is Oleg Mutu, one of the most respected Romanian cinematographers, who worked with the likes of Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, Sergei Loznitsa, Aleksandr Mindadze, Igor Cobileanski, Marian Crișan, Tomasz Wasilewski, Radu Potcoavă, Anca Damian, Florin Șerban and Liviu Săndulescu.