Uppercase Print

In 1981 chalk slogans in block capitals started appearing on walls in the Romanian city of Botoșani, asking for free trade unions, for freedom of speech, for an end to the bread queues. Behind them was a schoolboy, Mugur Călinescu. Radu Jude films Gianina Cărbunariu's documentary play, assembled from the Securitate file, in something close to a stage arrangement: actors read out the statements, the informer reports and the surveillance notes flatly. Between them he cuts state television archive from the same years, all parades and cheerful programming. Călinescu died of leukaemia in 1985, aged nineteen. The claim that a radioactive substance given to him during interrogation caused it was examined in 2017, when his body was exhumed; military prosecutors found no evidence of poisoning or irradiation and closed the case.