The Pharaoh

The Pharaoh by Tiger Award winner Sinisa Dragin is a visual document about Romania in a period of transition. Through the experiences and reports of a journalist, a variety of typical situations for this country become visible. Costache Nicolau, nicknamed the Pharaoh, is an elderly tramp who lives in the streets of Bucharest. His only possession is a simple set of scales. He spent 40 years as a political prisoner in Siberia, but he can hardly remember anything about it. His story attracts the attention of a young reporter. This film is about her and her first revelation. Will she learn anything from it? Will she look at the world through different eyes? The images suggest she will: there are some parts in colour – of the things which take place in front of her video camera -but also parts in black & white, heavy compacted images that seem to hang somewhere in space. Whose point of view is this? The Pharaohs were absolute rulers, God on earth. Once they built pyramids and the Sphinx. Costache Nicolau is like them a little in a strange way. The puzzles surrounding his person (who is he, why did he have to go to Siberia, what happened to his little sister, was he the lover of Irina and who is Sandor?) are minor in comparison with the great mysteries of this world. The attempts of the young journalist to unravel them is also an attempt to solve that one major puzzle. Could the answer be found in religion?