Die Daumendreher

300 patients are packed, sometimes 12 to a room, into the Romanian psychiatric institution of Gura Ocnitei. The daily routine is reduced to medication, sleep and food, without any kind of therapy or reintegration programme. The internees of all backgrounds (from mentally or physically disabled to social cases) are left to themselves with no hope of ever leaving this place, no perspective or future. Thus, the inhabitants have created their own closed community. Inside this very peculiar society, people become friends, get married and split up again. They trade with coffee and cigarettes which have come to replace official currency. And above all, music brings some colour in this dullness, and allows them to dream of another world. The film, shot in still and precise long takes, reflects the immobility of daily life in the institution and offers at the same time an impressive witness to man’s urge to survive. (DOK.fest München)