Consisting of recent footage and archive images from 1995 and 1996, “The Trial” documents the case of Mihai Moldoveanu, a former Romanian army officer sentenced to 25 years in prison for a crime he claims he did not commit. 

After three courts, two that condemned him and one that exonerated him, and a long series of attempts to prove his innocence, in June 2012 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided that in the cause of Mihai Moldoveanu against Romania a violation of the right to a fair trial occurred. The defendant had no lawyer, there were no hearings and no direct evidence was submitted. 

The documentary follows Mihai Moldoveanu after his provisional release and focuses on the referral of the case and the consequences of the new sentence, giving the viewer the role of a juror in a complicated and controversial lawsuit.

After the screening of a montage fragment, the debate will focus on the difficulties faced by a filmmaker in representing the intricacies of a legal investigation and take on a wider scope, turning the Moldoveanu file into a case study on the way justice operates in Romania. 

Speaker: Alexandra Carmen Lăncrănjan, prosecutor