HOOKED

Mihai and his girlfriend, whom he calls “Sweetie”, drive out of Bucharest into the countryside one weekend. A picnic is meant to do the relationship good, worn down as it is by bickering – though there are moments in between when the two of them laugh and hold hands. Then, on a forest road, the car runs over a young woman, a prostitute. Mihai wants to take her to hospital; Sweetie is against it and gets her way. What follows casts a new light on the couple – and shows how much people can change in a single day. “Hooked” (Pescuit sportiv, Romania 2008) is the first feature by Adrian Sitaru.

Sitaru tells the story entirely in subjective shots: the camera takes on the characters’ point of view, the viewer sees what they see, and finds themselves in the middle of a relationship that is falling apart before their eyes. The film premiered in 2008 in the Giornate degli Autori in Venice; it established Sitaru as one of the important new voices of Romanian cinema after 1989. “Hooked” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2009.

Shown at the 2009 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2009 · Film Archive