Traffic

An art heist in a Rotterdam-based museum leads to poignant reflections on the treatment of Romanian migrants in Europe. Teodora Ana Mihai’s second feature is a scathing critique on globalism and the exploitation of those that dream of a better life.

Imagine successfully stealing a famous painting worth millions of euros, but then you are faced with a dilemma: how do you go about selling it? This is the subject of Teodora Ana Mihai’s second feature film Traffic. Loosely based on true events, this hybrid – somewhere between a heist movie and politically engaged melodrama – penned by Palme d’Or-winning Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu explores how the displaced position of two Romanian migrants in Belgium leads to a  desperate act of rebellion.

Going back-and-forth between Romania, Belgium and the Netherlands – including some show-stopping scenes in Rotterdam – Traffic acknowledges the economic precarity of migrant workers while ultimately reflecting on something much more profound: the dehumanising conditions that people find themselves in once they arrive in western Europe. Stealing these artworks isn’t necessarily motivated by financial reasons, it’s a way to avenge the abject ways that the men and women in this film have been treated as second-class citizens. As such, this genre bending film becomes a poignant reflection on political, economic and cultural hierarchies of power, probing the hopeless ways that individuals try to subvert these mechanisms of injustice. 

– Hugo Emmerzael

Trailer

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