Masterfully directed with pitch-perfect tension, this award-winning Romanian film orchestrates a captivating portrait of the last days of Ceausescu’s regime, as seen through the eyes of six interconnected characters.
A confident and savagely funny work which… captures the exhilarating impact of history in the making.
The New Year That Never Came 2024
Anul nou care n-a fost
The chaotic unravelling of Romania’s 1989 Revolution and the fall of Ceaușescu and its Communist regime has been given the cinematic treatment before, notably in Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest (NZIFF 2006). Nearly 20 years later, writer-director Bogdan Mureșanu revisits the events leading up to that historical moment in his finely crafted feature debut.
Unfolding over the two fateful December days that precede the start of the Revolution, Mureșanu’s deftly written script weaves together the stories of six citizens navigating the machinery of state surveillance in full swing. A desperate TV director casts an actress solely on the basis of looks, after the star of his New Year special defects to the West. Meanwhile, his teenage son who is planning to cross the border illegally is monitored by an agent of the secret police, who also happens to be overseeing his mother’s relocation to a new apartment.
Mureșanu orchestrates his cast through a cavalcade of complications and coincidences, culminating in a tragicomic portrait of a country on the brink of change, unwittingly marching into history. — Andrei Tanasescu