THE FIXER

Radu works for a French news agency in Bucharest, but he’s not a “real” reporter just yet. He works as a “fixer”, an intermediary between foreign journalists, their sources and the local authorities. He’s hoping that his big break might turn out to be the new angle he’s working on two under-aged prostitutes who were recently brought from France to the Transylvanian backcountry of Romania. What appears to be easy pickings in the beginning quickly proves to be a heavy undertaking, both procedurally and personally. Thanks to Radu’s connections and dogged persistence, the team manages to get closer to conducting an interview with one of the girls, who is still severely traumatised, while Radu himself is directly confronted with the content of his work. THE FIXER approaches Radu’s development with a sober, steady gaze, in meticulously composed images of striking precision. The tension is restrained and as such all the more unsettling, the dramatic climax is brief and shattering, the denouement is an instance of perfectly staged, wordless emotion. A clear-sighted film about personal and journalistic responsibility, about ethics and empathy in a jaded (media) world and, last but not least, about a country where values are often subject to reckless juggling.