ABSTRACT
After Ceaşescu’s fall, Romanian filmmakers no longer had to hide behind obscure, undecipherable dialogue and oblique character references to tell their stories. Without fear of banishment, they began to make fresh, open portraits of Romanian life on the ground, from army service to love between the sheets. This movement toward naturalistic cinema—the “Romanian new wave”—revealed a nation that faces tribulation with an enviable amount of good humor.
