MEN OF DEEDS (Oameni de treaba)

Followed by a Q&A with film critic Mihai Fulger

Ilie, a small-town police chief, wants to build a modest comfortable life for himself, but ends up making the wrong choices. Middle-aged and alienated, he feels the need to be a part of something – to build an orchard, even a home. Although dubious things happen in the village, Ilie only sees what suits him. The moment he gets involved in the village marks the beginning of his collapse. In a vacuum of solutions, he tries to be what he has never been before: the justice seeker who arrests everyone guilty.
“An exceedingly mordant comedy that gradually bleeds out to tragedy, Paul Negoescu‘s “Men of Deeds” is another Romanian exercise in finding personal and institutional corruption under every upturned stone, behind every unlocked small-town door, in every heavily conditional handshake. Audiences won’t be nearly as startled, but it’s bleakly compelling all the same.” (Variety)