site.btaFilm Based on True Story of Romanian Prosecutor Who Took His Life under System Pressure Screened for Bulgarian Audience in Bucharest

The feature film Why Me? (“De ce eu?”) by director Tudor Giurgiu was screened on Sunday before a Bulgarian and international audience at Apollo 111 in Bucharest. The event was organized at the initiative of the OrașulReel Foundation in cooperation with Transilvania Film. 

The film is a co-production between Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. On the Bulgarian side, co-producers are brothers Viktor and Borislav Chouchkov. Released in 2015, the film is based on a true story. The plot unfolds in 2002, 13 years after the fall of communism in Romania, at a time when the judicial system was struggling. 

The 125-minute film tells the story of Romanian prosecutor Cristian Panait, who is assigned to investigate a colleague on corruption charges and later takes his own life at the age of 29. 

“The recent events that prompted and motivated us to organize this screening were the protests in Romania and Bulgaria in December last year. Although the focus of the demonstrations in Bulgaria was not specifically judicial reform, it is one of the objectives,” Ivanika Shisheva, Chair of the OrașulReel Foundation, told the audience. She added that efforts would be made to find a platform to screen the film in Bulgaria as well. 

The screening was followed by a discussion with lead actor Emilian Oprea and former prosecutor Mircea Raileanu, a colleague and acquaintance of Cristian Panait. 

Raileanu said he had known Cristian Panait and remembered him as a kind, respectful and dedicated professional. 

“Yes, it is indeed a noble profession, but if my children, I have two sons, wanted to pursue it, I would stop them, I would not allow it. Unfortunately, years later, things have not changed much. There was a purge in 2015–2016. But this octopus is once again gaining strength. You probably remember when President Nicușor Dan invited magistrates to a meeting to discuss the problems in the system. Some of them wanted to meet him at petrol stations because they were afraid,” Emilian Oprea commented. 

Asked by BTA what measures should be taken to bring change to the system, not only in Romania but also in Bulgaria, the Balkans and globally, Mircea Raileanu said: 

“The pressure we saw in the film exists in the United States, Italy, France, and there it is on a much higher level and even more serious. Bulgaria and Romania are sister states; we were monitored for many years with regard to the judicial system. It does not depend only on prosecutors. The hope lies with the younger generations, who have access to information, travel widely and live in a different reality.” 

According to Oprea, reform is necessary.

“Education, culture, heightened civic vigilance, pressure from us on the political class, on ministers, on the president. Reform. Education and culture. So that we can grow. To cleanse the nostalgia for neo-communism that is being instilled in young people. Reform of the judicial system. But I am not optimistic. Things repeat themselves,” he said. 

The OrașulReel Foundation was established at the end of 2021 and is dedicated to researching and preserving Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage in Bucharest and beyond Bulgaria’s borders, as well as promoting Bulgarian culture through cinema and the arts.