The Afternoon of a Torturer

Franţ Ţandără, a former torturer in the Romanian prisons, is ready to confess his crimes to a journalist and a former political prisoner. The two meet him at the train station in Giurgiu, where Ţandără welcomes them with flowers. But the confession presents problems from the very beginning: the tape recorder doesn’t work, Ţandără talks too fast or too slow... The protagonist tries to begin the tale by talking about the least significant parts of his life: his father in the military, his education, his wanderings at the end of the war. The journalist tries to pin him down with direct questions about his career as a butcher, but only gets evasive answers. Ţandără’s wife intervenes to ask them to stop torturing her husband...

Festivals: Venice 2001, Thessaloniki 2001