Radu Muntean masterfully weaves a tense moral fable from the fibers of everyday life, closely following the regimented work and leisure hours of Sandu Patrascu, an administrator in charge of car registration, as he goes through the paces and, in the midst of it all, overhears crucial evidence of a murder committed in his apartment building. One Floor Below slowly, meticulously, ratchets up the tension as Patrascu enigmatically guards his dark, festering secret and as the murderer begins to insinuate himself, menacingly, into Patrascu’s life. Like the late films of Robert Bresson, One Floor Below moves with a moral precision and mystery, a sense that larger forces, perhaps the heavy shadow of totalitarianism, drive the characters forward, almost without understanding of their actions and inactions.