An archival film, announced as being made up of footage spanning the entire communist period in Romania, would promise yet another bleak portrayal of recent Eastern European history. Ana Lungu’s Merman, however, composed exclusively of home movies, offers an alternative perspective: while the social constraints imposed by the political regime echo in the background, the foreground is far from purely political. Instead, it is deeply personal, capturing both the flaws and the highlights of the universal human condition. Romanians had fulfilling lives and experienced carefree moments, too, under the dictatorship, Merman seems to say, and the deft avoidance of all pre-established clichés on the subject is perhaps its biggest strength. After premiering in the International Competition of FID Marseille in 2024, Merman has just been shown in the Romanian Days sidebar of the Transilvania International Film Festival, where it received the well-deserved FIPRESCI Award for Best Romanian Film (see the news).

Lungu recycles material from three main sources: her uncle’s amateur videos, shot between 1966 and the early 1990s as a family testament left for his daughter; 8 mm reels from the 1940s owned by descendants of an aristocratic family; and the private audiovisual archive of a music professor, referred to under the pseudonym Alexandru Popovici, which reveals details of his professional, personal and intimate life, along with curious insights into collective living and the subtle political context of the time.

Seemingly structured to mirror the course of a human life, Merman begins with glimpses of childhood, underpinned by the dreamy score of Bach’s “Prelude No. 1, BWV 846”. The “fable” progresses through early life stages, switching to a joyful socialist melody accompanying footage of schoolchildren in uniforms with red pioneer ties. Adulthood is largely portrayed through Popovici’s experiences and relationships with women: trips abroad, otherwise a rarity for an ordinary Romanian; correspondence with his sister revealing the status of womanhood at the time (“intelligence does not look well on women”) and instances of local corruption; as well as bold, voyeuristic, erotic footage with several of his lovers – material that, at the time, could have landed the filmmaker in jail. Some evidence of the professor’s forced involvement with the secret services also pops up, including his code name in the files: Triton (the mythological equivalent of “merman”), which lends the film its original title. It also refers to the musical interval of the tritone, once called the "devil’s interval" and prohibited in sacred compositions – a reference that coincidentally hints at the professor’s hidden erotic life. However, the secret service theme remains rather peripheral, with much more space given to the film’s lyrical layer.

Teetering between public and private, Merman paints an insightful portrait of society at the time, reminiscent of Péter Forgács’ found footage-based experimental series Private Hungary, while also insisting on being an apolitical, quotidian, sensual and partially even humorous freestyle perspective on the era – one that remains highly subjective despite the narrator’s detached voice, attempting to objectively contextualise what we see on screen.

As Yugoslav-Serbian writer Danilo Kiš argues in an essay, being poor and tormented by history for most of their existence, Eastern Europeans have voluntarily adopted the tragic mask of homo politicus, denying themselves the right to be homo poeticus. Ana Lungu’s Merman, co-written and edited by Yugoslav-born, Berlin-based director Dane Komljen, feels like a joint effort by two Eastern Europeans to reclaim the right to be poets, rather than political victims, reviving an ideologically labelled excerpt of time, and lending it an unusually emotive and introspective tone.

Merman is a co-production between Romania’s 4Proof Film and Microscop Film.