The Point of No Return

Abstract

Twenty years after the fall of the communism, Romanian villages have been greatly de-populated. Romanians, once forbidden to hold a passport, are now leaving the country on an average rate of several hundred thousand per year. The result is tragic and profound, with dramatic long-term consequences. Tens of thousands of children are left without proper supervision or education. The family concept, once a vital foundation of this once patriarchal society, is destroyed in the desperate rush for gold in the West. The children of migrants often become criminals themselves, therefore closing a vicious circle. This the plot of When I want to whistle, I whistle (Florin Serban, 2010), but also the philosophy behind Outbound (Bogdan George Apetri, 2011), the movie which closes stylistically the first decade of the New Romanian Cinema. Through an examination of a number of films that stay home or venture abroad, this chapter analyzes the failure of Great Expectations of immigration and the fall of the Western myth and resulting generalized sociological desperation, major themes of the New Romanian Cinema.

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