Crulic – The Path to Beyond

Narrated from beyond the grave by its main protagonist, Crulic – The Path to Beyond is an unusual animated feature telling the story of a 33-year-old Romanian, who died in a Polish prison while on hunger strike. He was wrongly accused of stealing credit cards from a Polish judge in Krakow when he claims he was not in the country.

The film reconstructs his life story from the available evidence, but its animated techniques lift its analysis to a new expressive level. The use of hand drawn images, collage, stop motion, and cut out animation brings subtlety and poetry to a tragic story that is both beautifully written and sensitively visualised. The character of Crulic is voiced by the Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov, noted for his work in Romanian ‘New Wave’ films. A co-production with the Krakow Festival Office, it is both a strong indictment of a prison system guided only by rules and an exposure of bureaucratic failing.