Thursday 4 November 2010
10.15, Showroom Cinema screen 4, 7 Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX, Tel. 0114 275 7727

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceausescu)

Documentary, Romania, 2010, 187 mins, Romanian with English subtitles. Directed by Andrei Ujica

When a dictator imposes his ego on a nation, the nation’s chronicle becomes his own story. Director Andrei Ujica assembled this ‘biography’ from official propaganda films, news footage, and never-before-seen home movies, and presents it without narration. We experience the Ceausescu years much as Romanians did: the Orwellian cant of party congresses, the illusions of prosperity belying lean times. We see Ceausescu backing Czech reformers at a Warsaw Pact meeting, and becoming the West’s darling for veering away from Soviet influences. Ceausescu greets Richard Nixon in Bucharest; is welcomed by the Queen in London. We see him with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, and watch his own cult of personality expand.

Bookended by his defiance in the face of his live television ‘trial’ on Christmas Day 1989, the film assumes we remember the execution of Ceausescu and his wife which followed immediately, and provides us with the means of understanding these events from a Romanian perspective.

“We may be witnessing the birth of a new film genre.” – Cannes Film Festival

Supported by The Ratiu Foundation

Details on sheffdocfest.com