Despite its intriguing title, this multi-layered oddity is less about the titular dictator’s criminal ruling, and more about his early years as an aspiring communist, as reenacted by a bunch of non-professional millennials who were picked for the cast in a vacant warehouse. Aged between 15 and 22 and coming from different backgrounds, the ‘actors’ enter the game head-on bearing no preconceived ideas of the dictatorship, and the more they get in character, the more they reveal about themselves during the shooting breaks. Shot in striking black and white, this bold and playful meta-film operating somewhere in the experimental space between fiction and documentary creates a collective portrait of a young generation that seems lost in the shades of grey of an ever-changing world.
Playing as part of the 17th Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema Festival, the longstanding Romanian Film Festival in New York. Presented by Insula 42, in partnership with Metrograph, Roxy Cinema New York, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema and Film Forum. With lead funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the support of Dacin Sara, the Romanian Filmmakers Union, Blue Heron Foundation, Mastercard, the Romanian National Film Center, and individual donors.