For two decades the South East European Film Festival has been the main gateway for films from primarily the former “Iron Curtain” countries to get a toehold in Los Angeles, the movie capital of the USA (and being Americans, but of course, we like to think of the world). More than any other major film fete in America, SEEFest arguably presents more productions dealing with socialism than any other Festival in the USA, although of course the almost 50 features, documentaries, shorts, animated works, etc., screening this year are not exclusively politically themed, and those that are, are not necessarily pro-socialist.
The 20th annual South East European Film Festival kicked off April 30 with a packed opening night gala at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. This year the Legacy Award was given to the world’s most famous living Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his incredible immigrant story. (Austria may not be considered to be part of Eastern Europe per se but it does have borders with five former Warsaw Pact nations.) Ah-nold dispatched a colleague to accept the award on his behalf, plus a sizzle reel with highlights of his amazing career on and off the screen.
An appropriate clip that should have been included in particular for the SEEFest audience is from 1988’s Red Heat, wherein Schwarzenegger plays Soviet policeman Ivan Danko, who partners up with Jim Belushi as a detective in Chicago. As I recall, there was a scene in this Walter Hill crime drama with a rare positive comment about socialism expressed in a Tinseltown production: After a car accident, Arnold’s character is asked for his vehicle insurance information and in essence he replies that in the USSR the socialist state handles insurance. (Perhaps the advertising slogan was: “You’re in good hands with all-Kremlin.” Take that, State Collective Farm!)
SEEFest founder, the indefatigable Vera Mijojlić, originally from Sarajevo, presented the Legacy Award to Schwarzenegger’s representative and spoke to the hundreds of theatergoers and diplomats inside of the WGA Theater, commenting that the Festival screens productions from almost 20 different countries. Veteran broadcaster Hettie Lynne Hurtes, who has appeared as a news anchor in movies such Ah-nold’s The Terminator, emceed the awards ceremony, which included a delicious, sumptuous buffet following the screening in the lobby of the WGA Theater.
An Ironic Take on the Iron Curtain
The Festival’s first film from one of the former “Iron Curtain” nations was perhaps from the “iron-est” of the so-called “Soviet satellites,” Romania, The New Year That Never Came. In any case, this 2024 feature by Bogdan Mureșanu has a decidedly ironic take on the Iron Curtain. This 2-hour and 18-minute movie epitomizes the value of filmfests like SEEFest in that by focusing on a particular region of the world, ethnicity and/or genre, American moviegoers are given an opportunity to experience and learn about something outside of our usual perceptions and narratives. In this example, The New Year That Never Came tells us about the downfall of the Stalinist dictatorship led by the ironfisted Nicolae Ceaușescu, who in one particularly hilarious sequence is referred to as “Uncle Nicki.”
There are about four different subplots that unfold throughout this lengthy feature that seem separate (although there’s some overlap). However, Mureșanu, who also wrote the screenplay, neatly ties all the disparate strands together into an organic whole as this tragi-comedy marches to its tumultuous climax, when Ceaușescu meets his fate. The various plotlines include an aging mother who resists removal, clinging to her lifelong apartment, which is scheduled to be demolished in order to make way for new apartment blocks (the East Bloc version of “gentrification”). Two young men, including one who slightly resembles Bob Dylan, try to escape from Romania. In a Christmas letter addressed to “Father Frost” a young boy unwittingly includes info that could finger his father, a common proletarian (Adrian Vancica as Gelu), to the secret police, and sheer hilarity ensues.
The fourth of these interwoven sagas involves a pretty blonde theater actress (Ioana Flora as Mariana), who is tapped to appear in a Christmas season-themed vignette with a pro-regime message, which she is loath to render. Here, Mureșanu may have had the grand finale of Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 immortal masterpiece The Great Dictator in mind, wherein the little Jewish barber is mistaken for Hitler (both roles are, but of course, played by Chaplin) at a Nuremberg-like rally and asked to address the world at a mass rally that is being broadcast.
While The New Year That Never Came exposes Americans to historic events that shook Romania in 1989, U.S. audiences may have difficulty following this multi-layered, complex story that is in Romanian with English subtitles. Because Mureșanu presumably wrote/directed this movie for Romanian ticket buyers who presumably are very familiar with what happened in their country, there is little context to explain things for broader audiences abroad. For example, in the conclusion, which includes dramatizations intercut with newsreel footage, we see archival shots of lots of flag with holes torn or sliced out in the middle of the banners. Those unfamiliar with what happened in Romania may not realize that these flags were defaced in order to remove emblems referring to Romania as a socialist state.
However, patient non-Romanian audiences will more or less understand what’s going on as the various stories all come together into a cohesive whole at the end, in this drama leavened with some funny moments and observations. I ended up enjoying The New Year That Never Came very much, and it reminded me of another film SEEFest film screened last year about the Romania’s violent revolution, Romanian director/co-writer/co-producer Tudor Giurgiu’s Libertate (Freedom), which also says: “Ciao Ceaușescu!”
However, I really couldn’t help but wonder if the Romanian masses are really much better off today, as a member of NATO, etc.? I have no idea, as I don’t know much about contemporary Romania, but I have traveled to nearby Hungary, which is certainly no picnic under strong man Viktor Orbán. And one thing I am definitely convinced of is that Russia was far better off under reformer Mikhail Gorbachev than it is now under strongman Vladimir Putin.
According to SEEFest’s website Mureșanu directed “The Christmas Gift, winner of the European Film Academy Award for Best Short Film 2019 and another 72 awards from 200 festivals, including the Grand Prix at Clermont-Ferrand, Best European Short Film at Alcine European Film Festival and three awards at Tampere Film Festival. His short art documentary ‘Negruzzi 14’ was showcased at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016.”
The 20th annual South East European Film Festival is taking place through May 7 at various L.A. venues. For more info about SEEFest see: https://seefest2025.eventive.org/films.
