A film directed by a Romanian will be one of the 34 feature-length fiction movies to be screened at the Berlin Film Festival this year in the Panorama section.

The film Why Me /De ce eu, directed by Tudor Giurgiu, will compete against productions from 29 countries, including the US, Argentina, Mexico, among others. It will have its worldwide premiere at the Berlinale.

The movie is based on a real story, of a young, idealistic prosecutor who tries to solve a complicated corruption case. The prosecutor based on which the main film character was created, Cristian Panait, killed himself by jumping off the fourth floor in 2002, when he was only 29. Just a year before his death, he was named prosecutor. Actor Emilian Oprea plays the main character in the movie.

“A movie inspired from a strong reality can be made in thousands of ways. I am however strictly interested in stripping the mechanism which triggered , in just 20 days a strong man, both physically and mentally, to take his own life. What mechanisms and internal chains of reaction start the moment you discover the whole system you worked for is in fact corrupted and rotten from the very ground? It is a film about the rapid disintegration of a man who chooses to fight the system from the inside,” said film director Tudor Giurgiu.

In Romania, the movie will premiere on February 27, after the Berlinale end. The Berlin Film Festival takes place between February 5 and 15.

editor@romania-insider.com