ALEXANDRU SOLOMON:
‘In the midst of our frustrations, the hypnotic gaze of a monk who has been dead for more than three decades promises us a better world. A disappointed world, which has lost any trust it every had, expects of this future saint the miracle of changes that have not happened before. The legend of Father Arsenie Boca—for it is about him that we are speaking—fills the void left by the disillusions of the last thirty years. After a rather ordinary life for the times in which he lived, Arsenie Boca enjoys an afterlife quite out of the ordinary, becoming not only a saving figure for millions of people or an omnipresent “brand”, but also an icon of the troubled times through which we are living.’

Alexandru Solomon, director and image director, is known for such feature-length documentaries as Marele jaf comunist (‘The Great Communist Bank Robbery’, 2004), about the robbery of the Romanian National Bank in 1959, for which he won the Grand Prix at the Mediawave festival in Hungary, Război pe calea undelor (‘Cold Waves’, 2007), a film about Radio Free Europe, on the theme of propaganda during the Cold War, Kapitalism – rețeta noastră (‘Kapitalism: Our Secret Recipe’, 2010), about a fictional return of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu to a new society with the familiar habits of business people, România: Patru patrii (‘Romania: Four Countries’, 2015), with the writers Mircea Cărtărescu, Gabriela Adameşteanu, Florin Lăzărescu, and Norman Manea, and Ouăle lui Tarzan (‘Tarzan’s Eggs’, 2017), about the first institute of primatology in the world. He teaches at UNArte and is president of the One World Romania Association. He is author of the book Reprezentări ale memoriei în filmul documentar (Representations of memory in the documentary film), published in 2016.