Requiem for Dominic

Not since Circle of Deceit - perhaps even Battle of Algiers - have the deadly chaos and white-knuckled fear of political turmoil been as convincingly conveyed as in this docu-thriller about the lies, violence and anger of the 1989 Romanian revolution. Shot on location in Timisoara just months after Ceausescu's demise, it interweaves newsreel and video footage with fictional material inspired by the fate of Dornhelm's childhood friend Dominic Paraschiv, with a fictional Paul Weiss (Mitterer) standing in for Dornhelm as an exile returning to seek out the truth behind Paraschiv's arrest and imprisonment as a Securitate terrorist allegedly guilty of murdering 80 factory workers. Despite its autobiographical aspects, the factually-based investigative plot serves primarily not to clear the late Paraschiv's name, but to demonstrate how the paranoia and bloodlust born of such a repressive regime merely serve to produce further fear and mindless brutality: humane ideals are in short supply, and anyone who threatens to expose the deceptions of an already unstable system finds his life in peril. Dornhelm films with a gut-wrenching immediacy, but never sinks to simplistic agit-prop.