The New Year That Never Came, Anul Nou care n-a fost about the dying days of Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime seen through the eyes of a handful of ordinary people has picked up two awards at the Venice International Film Festival.
The movie directed, written and produced by Bogdan Muresanu, won the FIPRESCI Award – given by the jury of the International Federation of Film Critics and the Bisato d’Oro 2024 award, for the Best Screenplay, offered by independent critics.
It got the awards before the official closing ceremony of the Venice festival, Agerpres news agency reported.
The film “stands out for its ambitious and outstanding direction. The six distinct stories, initially seemingly independent, gradually interconnect in a rare balance of narrative threads. The film culminates in a deep exploration of human behavior, influenced by the fear of political repression, shared by many generations who lived under an authoritarian regime,”the jury said.
” We appreciate this film for its careful political vision, sophisticated and engaging storytelling, artistic balance and the exceptional casting,” the members of the FIPRESCI jury – Jean-Philippe Guerand (France), Martin Horyana (Czech Republic), Hanna Pilarczyk (Germany), Gaia Simionati (Italy), Alissa Simon (USA), Simone Soranna (Italy), said.
The independent critics at the 81st edition of the festival also gave it the Bisato d’Oro 2024 award for Best Screenplay.
“Bogdan Muresanu’s script sensitively illustrates a crucial moment for the history of Romania, interspersing in an exceptional way the destinies of some distinct and strong characters, offering us, at the same time, an emotional story and a unique study of the soul, a true human comedy”.
The jury was made up of Paolo De Cesare (president), Violeta Bava, Maria Giovanna Vagenas, Rudiger Suchsland, Erfan Rashid and Giovanni Bogani.
Romania, a few days before Christmas in 1989, and the Nicolae Ceausescu regime is in its death throes. Not that the ordinary people of Bucharest know it – the news of an uprising in the city of Timisoara and the subsequent massacre of protestors by government forces is suppressed and sanitized, and a paralyzing fear of the dictatorship still prevents many from speaking out against it.
“With his accomplished feature debut, Bogdan Mureşanu views a pivotal moment in Romanian history – the fall of the Ceausescu regime – through the eyes and the interconnected stories of six ordinary people. It’s a confident and, at times, savagely funny work which, while a little over-long, builds to a blisteringly powerful conclusion.
Having previously worked in advertising and literature, Mureşanu switched to filmmaking in 2012 with the short film Half Shaved; a latter short, 2018’s The Christmas Gift, won numerous prizes including Best Short Film at the European Film Awards.
That work, which tells of a father’s consternation when he discovers that his son’s letter to Santa lists his Dad’s Christmas wish as “the death of Uncle Nic” (a less than affectionate nickname for Ceausescu), is incorporated as one of the strands in this feature.
A seemingly random group of people unwittingly approach what will become the most momentous day of their lives. Gelu (Adrian Vancica), the father from The Christmas Gift, is a factory worker who is instructed by his boss to drive to an address and help move some furniture, Screen Daily reported. There he meets Margareta (Emilia Dobrin), a woman whose house, like the rest of the neighborhood, is scheduled for demolition. She’s grieving for the loss of her home and unimpressed by the new apartment that her son, Ionut (Iulian Postelnicu) has found for her.
A secret policeman, Ionut is alert for “hostile actions and hateful inscriptions” at the local university. Laurentiu (Andrei Miercure), a lanky student with a haphazard plan of escaping across the Danube to Yugoslavia, is a figure of interest for Ionut following his involvement in a satirical comedy play. Laurentiu’s father Stefan (Mihai Calin) is the harried stage manager at the television station, where the lead actress in a pre-recorded, fervently patriotic New Year’s Special has just defected and her close-ups need to be re-recorded with a less politically toxic look-alike performer. That’s where theater actress Florina (Nicoleta Hancu) comes in. But since she is frantically trying to contact her ex-boyfriend in Timisoara, Florina is not inclined to pay tribute on camera to Ceausescu as “the most beloved son of the people”.
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