Synopsis

The film follows in real life the dream of any man living on the streets: to one day become famous and leave behind a life of poverty, misery and humiliation. Ion Barladeanu is on his way to becoming an important contemporary artist, but in May 2008 he was still an anonymus tramp on the streets of Bucharest.

The Story

Ion Barladeanu is a 62 years old homeless man. He sleeps on a filthy mattress at the end of a garbage chute of a bloc on Calea Mosilor, in exchange for sorting the garbage of the landlords. In “his home”, Ion recovers what falls next to his mattress, this way ending up reading all the books, magazines and newspapers that the others get rid of.

When he was young, Ion was dreaming about becoming a film director. In the 70's he started to create collages that he refers to as "my films", but this is a secret he only shares with people intelligent enough to understand and appreciate his works. He doesn't care about getting rich, he only wants a simple bicycle. 

Dan Popescu is a young gallery owner that has accidentally heard about Ion Barladeanu and decided to visit him. He was overwhelmed by more than 800 collages, made by the homeless artist between the ’70s and the ’90s. Those were times when such art manifestations were forbidden and totally inaccessible to Romanians. Ironically, this self-taught man is convinced that he invented collage, since he has never seen this art form before. 

At 62, Barladeanu exhibited in Bucharest for the first time 20 political works.

Popescu found him a new house to live and work, but Ion moved after a few months, as he found it very hard to leave his “home” by the garbage chute. Ion started to work on new collages that, like the old ones, recover the past through the artist’s personal experiences or through his own point of view. One can see traces of his experience as a grave digger or his experience in jail.

Ion visits his hometown and meets his family after 20 years. He had escaped this village, running away from a family that wanted him to become a communist worker, considering him an “useless crazy guy”.

Popescu prepares Ion’s first international exhibitions in Basel, London and Paris.

Director's note

At first I saw pictures of Ion Barladeanu’s works and was impressed by their cinematic quality. When I heard his life story, I decided to explore the personality and work of this rare self-taught artist, shaped in the undergrounds of a totalitarian regime.

I've always had a fascination for people living at the borders of society, living a life that bypasses conventions and comforts. These people often become the creators of a critical discourse, the cynics, the eccentrics. In Shakespeare’s plays, the fools always have the important role of unveiling the truth in the drama. Ion Barladeanu seemed to me the eccentric with the Shakespearean fools’ qualities. He was never an “honourable citizen” and remained, at the same time, both  outside and inside the society. He created his art in an isolated environment. Critics, trends, market or any other outside expectations or comparisons haven’t influenced his craft. Today Ion could represent a rare phenomenon compared to the established art market where artists are hyped and “corrupted” from the very beginning of their artistic manifestation, starting with their institutional education. 

"The world according to Ion B." is for me a way of exploring the question of what is art in in its pure form and what is a pure artist. 

There was another attraction to Ion’s story for me as a filmmaker, an attraction that derived from often hearing but never actually seeing that “real talent will always come through, no matter under which conditions!” 

Ion Barladeanu has always been in love with films and when he was young he dreamed of becoming a filmmaker. He made his wish come true and invented his own medium for telling stories in a cinematic manner with little or no resources. Ion has worked with all the great stars in film history. From Chaplin and Liz Taylor to Alain Delon, from Brigitte Bardot to Sylvester Stallone, all big actors starred in the films Ion B directed. He cut them off newspapers and magazines and casted them in his collages. Just like films, his collages are of various genres, tell complex stories and develop characters in a universal language.  

Ion B. made the dream of any filmmaker come true: all his "films" are easy to understand for people from different generations, cultures or educational backgrounds.