”Romania apparently only produces good films”, stated film critic Peter von Bagh once when commenting on the country’s festival entries. At least partly true, considering for example Bogdan Muresanu’s first full-length film The New Year That Never Came: it’s won festival awards from Venice and Cairo to India and Palm Springs, and has been touted as a masterpiece countless times online.
Muresanu returns to the absurd circumstances of the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu over Christmas 1989 through darkly humoristic lens. The collective ”symphony” juxtaposes the fates of six different people: a factory worker, who’s worried about the letter his son sent to Santa Claus; a television producer, who’s charged with changing the New Years’ Show; his son, plotting to escape the country; a pensioner on the verge of losing her flat; her son, working for the Romanian Secret Service and the actor coming in to replace the star attraction of the television show.
True to form, the film is shot in a 4:3 format with a muted colour palette and captures with striking sarcasm how a seemingly utopian, but ultimately dystopian totalitaristic state crumbles. The film’s finale escalates into an almost 20-minute documentary-style jubilation, accompanied by Ravel’s Bolero.
Timo Malmi