UPPERCASE PRINT

Following on the heels of his examination of Romanian anti-Semitism, Radu Jude travels back in his most recent work to the era of dictatorship under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Within what amounts to a sort of stage setting, he presents the story of the adolescent Mugur Călinescu, a young man who gradually became a target of the Securitate for the regime-critical slogans he spread by writing them on walls. Jude reconstructs the case with the aid of the secret police’s own files. Through the juxtaposition of these staged scenes with contemporary archival footage drawn from the period in question, a blending of the private and public occurs. In so doing, the film succeeds in laying bare the brutality of state repression.