18/11/2024 - The filmmaker decrypts his virtuoso and joyful tragicomedy made of six intertwined stories over 24 hours, at the turn of the 1989 Romanian revolution

(© Arras Film Festival)

Winner of the Orizzonti competition in Venice, The New Year That Never Came [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bogdan Mureşanu
film profile] is the debut feature of Romanian filmmaker Bogdan Mureșanu, whom we met at the 25th Arras Film Festival where his film won the Silver Atlas - Best Director award of the competition and the Youth Jury Prize given by high-schoolers.

Cineuropa: Why did you want to look back at the Romanian revolutionary period of 1989?
Bogdan Mureșanu: There are fewer films about this topic than we think, a topic that is very important not only for the history of Romania, but also for that of the European continent since the separation between Eastern Europe and Western Europe was a shame and completely anti natural. I was a child at the time, but I recall very well the day of 21 December 1989: the revolution was a true miracle, the atmosphere of which I’ve tried to recreate at the end of my film. It was like an expansion of time, each second became an eternity, with immense joy. Everything seemed bigger than life. But immediately after, there was violence, deaths, deception in the months and years that followed. Nevertheless, since I wanted to make a ‘feel good’ movie, I chose to end the story at the moment when everything was perfect.

Why the tragicomic genre?
Because the characters don’t know that there will be a happy ending. They live in tragedy, in a world of fear, paranoia, despair, almost as in a jail, like lab rats who don’t exactly know where the exit is, or whether there even is one. But for the spectators, it is a comedy because they already know the ending of the story (Ceaușescu’s regime will fall) without knowing, however, how the characters will face the situation. The whole is also tied to the Romanian tradition of dark humour: to cry and laugh at the same time.

What about the mosaic structure with six main characters and intertwined stories?
I had a lot of stories in mind that I had already developed for short and mid-lengths films, and I decided to interweave them together. It was a very complicated writing challenge that excited me. All these intersecting characters, it was almost like maths because the story unfolds from one day to the following morning. I’ve had to compose with all the freedom and the limits of the exercise. The tightened time frame, it’s also a trademark of what has been called the New Wave of Romanian cinema, but one can also think of Greek tragedies. I added a documentary style more in line with the Danish Dogma movement, but very scripted in my case. Because I had to make sure the script didn’t dominate the film itself, which is why I used the documentary style in order to gain in fluidity.

Did you define these six main protagonists in order to give the largest possible representation of Romanian society at the time?
In a way, yes, even if I’ve had to restrain myself since six stories that blend together, six main protagonists but also many other characters, that’s already rather perilous because, for example, one can hesitate between different characters to follow. But I did some research on this kind of multiple story narrative and I rewatched in particular Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson, Short Cuts by Robert Altman, Dog Days by Ulrich Seidl, Amores perros and Babel  by Alejandro González Iñarritu.

Why did you use the 4:3 format?
First because the film revolves around a real TV show glorifying Ceaușescu called The New Year That Never Came and which was never broadcast due to the revolution. I discovered it on YouTube and it was fascinating, because I knew that the comedians taking part in this show had no desire to be there. There was also a playful and ironic dimension, if we think about the fact that these praises to Ceaușescu were going to be completely useless. I’ve tried to represent that through the film’s format since these poor characters are like rats imprisoned in a square, in a box. Then, the format widens to 16:9 when the revolution takes place, like a metaphor for freedom, but also as a commentary on the language of television.

The film is very funny as a whole, but you also depict clearly the oppressive character of a totalitarian regime.
It’s very important no one forgets what that kind of regime was like, especially when there’s a risk of falling back into it. We feel as though democracies are eternal, but they are not. No country, nor person, likes to look at itself in the mirror, but the nations that have the courage to do it come out the other side bigger and better, and films can be the vectors of this process.

(Translated from French)