Numaratoarea manuala

I watched Daniel Sandu's film last night, part of the 'Court Circuit' short films series at ARTE TV and I liked it. It catches a glimpse of the reality of a country that joined the European Union a few years ago and fights the inertia both at personal level as well as at system level. Somewhere in Romania cars traffic needs to be counted and reported to the EU. The work is done 'old style', teams of two people sit by the road and count cars according to the number of axes. Is this a work to care about? Is it useful? Can't it be done automatically? Maybe yes, but then what will happen with all these people, will they join the ranks of the unemployed? And how will the relations (friendship, family) be impacted if one of the folks in the team apparently makes a mistake? All these micro-universe and micro-universal questions are well caught by the director, with good help from the two actors, in the realistic style that made the Romanian cinema known in the last years. With minimalistic means Daniel Sandu caught well a snapshot of human and social reality, and I wish him to fulfill the promises of this short first film.