Dozens of women have been killed by current or former partners in Romania this year, while thousands of cases of violence against women are filed annually. In this tragic context, Adina Sădeanu’s documentary Anatomy of Ordinary Crimes has just had its world premiere in the Romanian Competition at the Astra Film Festival, spearheading perhaps the most visible thematic sidebar of the gathering’s 32nd edition, “Woman/Mother – At What Price?”

The documentary focuses on several survivors whose lives have been turned upside down by vengeful partners. One could state there is nothing “ordinary” about their crimes, and yet the sheer number of them and the indifference they are met with – be it by the victim’s families and acquaintances, or the authorities – do make them feel ordinary, even though they have cataclysmic consequences on the protagonists’ lives. In a society that seems obsessed with blaming the victim, this memorable documentary tells us loud and clear that nobody deserves what its protagonists have had to go through and that there is no such thing as a “perfect victim”.

While the film was screened in Astra’s main venue, thousands marched through the streets of Sibiu and other Romanian cities demanding assurances for women’s safety, with participants holding placards bearing messages such as “No means no” and “One of us has not been able to be here today”, as the number of Romanian women who lost their lives to domestic violence reached 45 that very day. On the screen, Sădeanu shows the patterns of violence that make women feel afraid and belittled, while the relentless perpetrators know they will not be punished for their crimes.

The cases are wildly different, and yet so similar. One involves a 13-year-old, Cosmina, who was drugged, raped and then blackmailed by the rapists to sleep with them and others, otherwise they would release the explicit videos shot during the rape. Meanwhile, Ştefania sees nude pictures of hers reaching all of her acquaintances on social media after a bad break-up with her abusive boyfriend. In a chilling recording of a phone conversation filed in her police complaint, he says, among other things that would require an urgent psychiatric evaluation, that he would have liked her to kill herself.

Alexa retells a conversation with her lawyer, who told her, “If the abuse was only psychological, then the case is lost from the very beginning.” Her abuser was a Belgian man who doxed (a term that means the victims’ details, including phone number and address, are published online) her repeatedly after she left him. To show that this doesn’t happen only to women, the director introduces the mother of Glenn, a French teenager who killed himself after his nude pictures were made public.

One by one, we meet representatives of the authorities. They are bothered by Sădeanu’s questions, and one has the impression that the victims, in their rather futile initiative of asking for justice, are forced to face a “perfect storm” made of outdated laws, police incompetence, misogyny and indifference. And it is not only the authorities who share the guilt, as much of the suffering stems from the so-called “court of public opinion”, those who judge from afar, posting negative comments and making the victims feel like the entire world has rallied against them. In one of the most haunting lines, a prosecutor asks rhetorically: “If you know it is harmful, why do you share [those pictures on social media]?”

Anatomy of Ordinary Crimes is a Romanian production staged by Axis Media Production, and co-produced by Avanpost Media and Bar-Prod Cons. The film will be released domestically next year.