The story is set in the early days of the 20th century, just before the two biggest nightmares of modern history: fascism and Bolshevism. It's a loose adaptation of a short novel written by Ion Luca Caragiale, the Romanian writer who understands us the most.
Being deeply in love with people, the main question for me personally when making movies is: “how come?”. In this case, it's about the act of killing.
SĂPTĂMÂNA MARE (Holy Week) explores various themes, some intentionally and some not, but mostly speaks about the vicious circle of hate that we don’t know how to break. It reflects on this pandemic of evil.
I’m not competing with written history. I do not wish to right any historical wrongs, to find guilty parties, or to create a parable; I do not even think it is cinema’s task to do such things. Instead, I’m taking an emotional look at how people face life from an existentialist point of view. I do think that the empathetic gaze unique to cinema can, in the case of this film, bring the eve of a pogrom to life, that moment when somebody – before the Internet, television, or colour photography – made the decision to set off for a place where “milk and honey” are apparently supposed to flow, or to depict the transition from the fear of death to murderous intent.
I only hope to raise doubts and let people formulate their own questions freely.
Andrei Cohn
