Zoom In

Three video essays on Romania’s agri-food industry

Zoom In presents three video essays examining Romania’s agricultural industry today. Developed through a collaboration between Norbert Petrovici and the Design Signals team, the series combines investigative texts and interviews with visual narratives. Found footage, archival material and original photography trace how precision, climate and chemistry meet the realities of Romanian farmland—from the soil upwards and from global markets back down.

Together, the essays move beyond the image of farming as a closed, self-sufficient system. They document a landscape in which local decisions—how a tractor is guided, a canal used or a fertiliser plant operated—are shaped by forces far beyond the field, including energy markets, European regulation and a changing climate. Zoom In traces where precision and investment end, and where farmers are left responding to systems they cannot control.

Each essay follows a different pressure point.

The Eye of the Tractor observes a large Banat Agri Group operation alongside a smallholder in Comloșu Mic. It examines how GPS-guided machinery has made farming measurable to the centimetre, while the price that grain eventually earns is still determined on exchanges the farmer never enters.

Seven Years for Five Months follows a farmer’s long effort to secure irrigation around the drainage canals of Giulvăz, in Timiș County. As Romania experiences some of the highest water stress in the European Union, the film asks whether infrastructure originally built to remove water can be reengineered to retain it.

Eighty Per Cent of a Sack is reported from the Azomureș fertiliser plant in Târgu Mureș. It follows the natural gas, carbon costs and international trade contained within every sack of fertiliser.

Credits

Visual design and video editing: Susanna Tomassini
Voice-over: Christine Cizmaș
Articles: Oana Simionescu, Norbert Petrovici and Daniel M Friedman
Research and interviews: Oana Simionescu and Norbert Petrovici
Research coordination: Louella Exton
Sound design: Sara Mei
Research developed in conversation with: Traian Dogar and Catalin Rotaru (Banat Agri Group), Franz Jakoby (Jakoby Farm), Alexander Degianski (Forest&Biomass), Loredana Gaiță (Timișoara verde-albastră) and Ovidiu Maior (Azomureș)
Field imagery: Alex Todirică