Inspired by a traumatic event from screenwriter and producer Ana Gheorghe’s childhood, Romanian director Andrei Epure’s first feature, Don’t Let Me Die [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], is now competing in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at Locarno. It makes for rather strange viewing and reads as a playful (in a not exactly pleasant way) sequel to Cristi Puiu’s seminal The Death of Mr Lăzărescu [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]: if in the 2005 film we see Ioan Fiscuteanu’s title character nudged closer and closer to death by the medical system, in Don’t Let Me Die, we see a young woman, Maria (Cosmina Stratan, from Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills [+lire aussi :
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interview : Cristian Mungiu
interview : Cristian Mungiu
interview : Cristian Mungiu
fiche film]), trying to give the last rites to a neighbour, Isabela (Elina Löwensohn), who has died unexpectedly at the entrance to their apartment block.

The story’s point of departure also inspired another film, the short Intercom 15, but Epure felt it deserved more time, and indeed it does because there is a lot of room for the absurd as we see Maria slowly taking the necessary steps for the deceased’s inhumation. And things will soon get both strange and difficult, as Maria has no legal connection to Isabela and even lacks some vital information for her mission to go smoothly. Stratan plays her character with a strange detachment, as if Maria were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, only to be engulfed by deathlike serenity a moment later, with a mere hint of the turmoil still visible in her eyes.

Besides asking if we aren’t a little bit dead inside, Epure seems determined to also enquire whether we are not a little bit crazy in our heads. Epure co-wrote Mammalia [+lire aussi :
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bande-annonce
fiche film], Sebastian Mihăilescu’s directorial debut, which made it into the first edition of the Smart 7 Festivals Network in 2023, and we see much of that film’s absurdity and eerie atmosphere in Don’t Let Me Die. Conversations we hear seem cut short and lacking in vital details so that we cannot fully understand them, or characters suddenly offer up lines such as “We believe in continuity and empathy”, or “I hate my fingers.” This is only one tool the film uses for conveying an unnerving feeling, that we live among people separated only by a few dozen centimetres of concrete, and yet we are so far from each other and, ultimately, as lonely as if we lived alone on different planets.

Epure floods his interiors with unwelcoming, harsh neon lights, the kind in which even the most perfect skin shows its imperfections, while he shoots the exterior night scenes in almost total darkness, making his characters look more like mere spectres on their way to a place governed by eternal and infinite night. These scenes are accompanied by a three-note musical motif played with an instrument that might be a pan flute, which deepens the mystery and traps the audience in a very peculiar place, somewhere between amusement and dread.

The screenplay explores the absurdity of dying, that final and inevitable passing that activates a plethora of bored state employees and rituals devoid of meaning for some, and yet extremely important for others. Don’t Let Me Die hit the author of this review especially hard, having lost his father decades ago before misplacing his death certificate, only to discover that Romanian town halls don’t issue duplicates and that cemeteries simply don’t do burials without said certificate – a perfect catch-22 that set in motion a Kafkaesque quest. In this respect, Don’t Let Me Die could have been titled Please Let Me Die and Let’s Get It Over With, as Epure is keen on showing the crazy, unbalanced and absurd tango between a person who deals with death on a daily basis and another who deals with it only once or twice in a lifetime.

Don’t Let Me Die was produced by Saga Film (Romania), and co-produced by Handplayed (Bulgaria), Tomsa Films (France) and Romanian outfits Arrogant Films and Conceptual Lab by Theo Nissim. Lights On handles its international sales.