An ingenious found-footage film which audaciously documents the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu solely by repurposing his own official propaganda films. “Transfixing, illuminating and haunting.” — Time Out
Andrei Ujică chillingly reveals... the manner in which a dictator constructs, and comes to believe in, his own cult of personality.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2011
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu 2010
Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu
This ingenious found-footage assemblage audaciously documents the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu solely by repurposing a treasure trove of official Communist-era newsreels and propaganda. The result is a mordant fiction in which we see Ceauşescu hobnob with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, host President Nixon on a state visit to Bucharest and receive a spectacularly weird, almost psychedelic welcome to North Korea, but see nothing of the bread queues, the overflowing orphanages or the economic ruin that crippled his country. — MM
“‘Autobiography’ is the operative word. This is the story of Ceauşescu as he would have written it in moving images if he could have. Romanians, of course, will write a mirror-opposite story as they watch, and the ironies will be rich – a black enough comedy to make one weep. But even for those with only the barest knowledge of this particular history, the movie is fascinating.” — Amy Taubin, Artforum