Dumnezeu la saxofon, dracu la vioara

At Gura Ocnitei, in a forgotten spot somewhere between Bucharest and the southern Carpathians, some 300 people have been living in a psychiatric hospital for twenty or thirty years. Most will never leave. The authorities propose neither therapy nor activities and the patients’ reinsertion does not seem to be the goal. The camera takes the place of an inmate and endeavours to convey, from the inside, the daily monotony and the small efforts to survive. It contemplates the heaviness of the walls, the dormitories and corridors, hears the same creaking doors and the staff’s endless shouting, and perceives the inner emptiness of lonely people surrounded by man-made walls. Knowing that there is no way out and singing. A story with no ending, seen as the only normality, outside of real time and space. And yet, it is the microcosmic story of present-day Romania.