Amid today’s limp ’80s remakes and contrived, 3-D popcorn movies, a less-recognized genre is experiencing what some critics dub a “new wave.”
Two Romanian documentaries made their world premieres at Cannes this year, including the well-received “Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu,” a documentary about the late Communist dictator. Director Andrei Ujica, who fled to Germany in 1981 to escape Ceausescu’s reign in Romania, milled through 1,000 hours of archive footage to film the project.
“It was a kind of self-therapy,” Ujica told Tom Wilson of the BBC World Service last month. “I’m free from him now for the first time in my life.”
While the niche of Romanian documentaries has spent the last few years accruing critical success — Romanian films won “un certain regard” at Cannes in 2005, Camera d’Or in 2006 and Palm d’Or in 2007 — the public’s been less receptive, particularly some Romanians themselves.
“I’ve proven myself with documentaries, but even friends ask when I’m going to go in the ‘real’ business of fictional film,” Romanian director Alex Solomon told the BBC’s Wilson.
Solomon thinks it’s because of the country’s complicated past with communist ideology.
“Documentary was used as propaganda during communism,” he says. “It had sort of a bad reputation in the ’90s, and decayed in the eyes of the public.”
Most films of Romanian new wave are set in the late ’80s, known for their minimalist style and deal with life under Ceausescu’s rule. He was the President of Romania from 1974 to 1989, and wilted Western relations and saw tension rise between Romania and the Soviet Union. He was also criticized for boasting a high quality of life in Romania in government-controlled films and TV broadcasts, but ignored obvious poverty and food shortages. Eventually, Ceausescu and his wife were overthrown and executed in 1989, making Romania the only Eastern Bloc country to overthrow its government forcefully or to execute its leaders.
For now, Romanian documentaries should be seeing a steady production rate, especially with the help of HBO’s Romania office. The station’s put out five documentaries already, and while the genre has its detractors, many Romanians watched — enough for HBO to consider making four documentaries a year, the BBC reports.
Watch the trailer to “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” here.
