In Venice Film Festival premiere “The New Year That Never Came,” set during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime in Romania and debuting its exclusive trailer with Variety, no one can be trusted. Not even Santa Claus.
“After all, he could be collaborating with Securitate the secret police! Maybe that’s the moral of this film: Always check Santa’s CV,” laughs director Bogdan Mureşanu.
He follows multiple protagonists on the verge of a nervous breakdown, making life-changing decisions in December 1989. An aspiring actress asked to perform in a propaganda-heavy TV special, two boys who are ready to flee, a woman whose entire life is literally about to collapse and a little boy who just sent a letter to Santa. The problem is, he happened to mention his dad would like to see “Uncle Nic” dead.
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“I wanted this film to feel like a symphony and to give a proper overview of the society at that time. I knew the beginning and I knew the end. In the middle, I just decided to play,” he says.
“Why? Because it’s hard. I thought: ‘If I am already supposed to ‘waste’ all this time making a film, why not do something intriguing’?”
Despite well-documented horrors of the regime that lasted years – Ceaușescu served as the country’s head of state from 1967 to 1989 – Romanians aren’t that critical of it anymore, argues Mureşanu.
“People tend to forget, that’s it. They just remember they used to be young back then and it probably wasn’t ‘that bad.’ But this film should function as a reminder of how bad it really was,” he notes.
“Personally, I think communism was always doomed to failure. When you try to reach a utopia, you end up with a dystopia instead. Many of these stories are inspired by real-life events and most of them actually happened.”
The circumstances of his protagonists can be dire, but they are also absurd.
“That’s our Romanian trademark: this absurd, black humor. Just think of playwright Ionesco. Maybe it’s our way of coping with the unexpected, also historically. We just make fun of everything.”
He focuses on a moment of political change in the film – “I wrote it like a bolero, that was my musical analogy. I wanted it to ‘explode’ at the end” – but the problems he shows aren’t safely stored away in the past.
“People should be more aware of the dangers of a totalitarian state. There is no distinction between the public and the private. It controls everything – including the female body. Even now, on social media, there is either ‘I like’ or ‘I dislike.’ There is no debate,” he observes.
“As a species, we are so excessive. When we go capitalist, we are all about brainless corporations. Then we switch gears, saving polar bears when everything else goes to hell. Also, we need enemies. It’s like in this poem by C. P. Cavafy: ‘What’s going to happen to us without barbarians?’ We really need them.”
Or filmmakers who are independent, he suggests.
“European cinema is founded by states. I noticed that most directors, unless they are already established – or old – are afraid to tell the truth about what’s really going on in their countries. We are easily blackmailed by these institutions because unless your film’s ticking all the boxes, you might not receive funding. But we should take more risks.”
In “The New Year That Never Came,” he tried to go bigger than most Romania dramas. Produced by Kinotopia and All Inclusive Films, it’s sold by Cercamon.
“Next up, I would like to have a film centered around a mug of coffee and two guys,” he shakes his head.
“This one was really exhausting and I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it, to tell you the truth. How can I reconstruct the whole TV studio of that time? And yet we managed, and it was fully functional.”
“A film usually costs as much as a small hospital, so it’s your moral duty to say something important with it.”
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