A New Wave within The New Wave of the Romanian Film Industry?
A New Wave within The New Wave of the Romanian Film Industry?

Summary/Abstract: A film can depict a country’s profile as well as a book, an art collection or atraditional dance does. Analyzing South-Eastern Europe in her book, Imagining theBalkans, Maria Todorova gives a definition of national identity to the effect that the mostvaluable aspects of identity are portrayed by that people’s leading intellectuals (Todorova38). This is our starting point here in examining Romanian cinema, with a particular focuson Charleston, directed by Andrei Crețulescu, a successful young director and fineintellectual. This paper aims to describe the quest for our true inner self, for our Romanianidentity, especially the new one, shaped and reshaped so roughly after the fall ofcommunism, which Crețulescu’s film illustrates.As Dominique Nasta has pointed out in his book, Contemporary RomanianCinema: The History of an Unexpected Miracle, the Romanian film industry is goingthrough a very flourishing time, its productions being awarded many international prizes.Many films tackle the topic of communism and its consequences from a psychologicalstandpoint, a trend which has been called The New Wave of Romanian film industry. Thequestions that arose immediately after having watched Crețulescu’s film were quite ahandful, and the present paper will try to answer some of them. Can we bury ourcommunist past once and for all? Can we overcome our collective fears, expectations andpainful memories? How could a love story, a story about betrayal, regrets andunpredictable events, be accountable for the mindset of a generation? Our aim is to provethat it could be and that it can definitely become the trigger to be pulled for a remarkablechange in the industry and, not in the least, in our mentality.

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