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| “CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’” WINS MORE AWARDS (7.07.2007) |
| (2007-07-09) |
| Last updated: 2007-07-09 17:30 EET |
The magnificent portrait of a small Romanian village where latent feelings start to surface with the arrival of foreigners”; “an overview of the world we live in, of globalisation, bureaucracy and the Americans’ image in Europe; late Romanian director Cristian Nemescu’s film “California Dreamin’ ” has brought Romania new film awards.
The film was awarded the “Un Certain Regard” Grand Prize at the Cannes Festival, the Golden Falcon Award at the Ibiza Festival and it has already been sold to the countries from the former Yugoslavia, to Albania, Bulgaria, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Most recently, the film received recognition at the European Film Festival in Brussels, being presented with the Iris Award for Best Film, the Audience Award and the TV Canvas Award for Best Film.
Some of the words used to describe the film which outranked other 13 European productions were “its true to life character makes it universal”. Reviews described Cristian Nemescu’s “Californian Dream’” as being the dream of a whole country Romania, that had waited in vane for the Americans to come, before the Soviet occupation. After 50 years of communism, Romanians welcome the Americans with a disfigured face, devastated by the microbe of resentment. Black and white sequences of interwar memories of the characters in the film – beautiful girls, stylish garments, bombed out bourgeois interiors – inserted in the stale present of the transition period after 1989 where everything is repulsive, creates an artistic background for a clash of personalities, fed by old frustrations changed into false legalism.
The film was inspired by a true story. During the Kosovo war, a NATO train with American troops transporting a radar to Yugoslavia is stopped at a rural Romanian railway station, where the station master refuses to clear the convoy through, because they lack customs documents. After several days of various negotiations and failed attempts, the American commander Doug Jones, played by Armand Assante, who is desperately tryinhg to accomplish his mission, resorts to a last method, instigating the villagers to a local mini revolution. This is a black comedy, a neo-realistic film, an image of the Romanian society presented by Cristian Nemescu in the form of a world that many people can identify with.
This was the first and the last feature film made by Cristian Nemescu, who died tragically in a car crash last year, aged only 27. Although unfinished, that is lacking the final editing touches , the film was well received at all events it entered, be they competions or not. Let us recall but a few of these events: The Transylvania International Film Festival, in Cluj, central Romania, the Cabourg Festival in France, CineVegas – the US, the Film Festival in Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova, the International Film Festival in Rabat, Morocco, the International Film Festival in Brussels, Belgium, La Rochelle Film Festival in France and Dubrovnik Festival in Croatia.
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2025-04-03
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