The 71 min. Eight Postcards from Utopia / Opt ilustrate din lumea ideală is a found-footage documentary assembled exclusively out of post-socialist Romanian advertisements.
“Having served a country newly emerged from an economy of shortage as an introduction to contemporary commodity culture, these ads all seem to communicate with one another despite their striking differences in style and product: they all depict a coherent fantasy world of fulfilled desires. Exploring the various facets of this utopian dream world with the toolkit of montage, the film turns the fictional and often ludicrous medium of advertising clips into a magnifying glass for the society’s desires, beliefs, hopes and fears”, said the directors.
Alexandru Teodorescu produced Eight Postcards from Utopia through Saga Film with a budget of 268,000 EUR, which was partially covered by a production grant from the Romanian Film Centre (CNC), and also with the support of Mindshare Media, Publicis Groupe Media, MMS Communications, Telekom Romania, Wavemaker Romania and Mediacom Romania.
Jude’s frequent collaborator Cătălin Cristuțiu edited both Eight Postcards from Utopia and Sleep #2, which is a 62 min. project described by Radu Jude as “a desktop film”.
“Sleep #2 means: life, death, nature, poetry, fragility, impressionism, selfies, Andy Warhol, love and kisses,” Jude detailed for FNE.
He produced the desktop film independently, having Raluca Munteanu as production manager, during a residency provided by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme.
Eight Postcards from Utopia and Sleep #2 will have their world premiere on 10 August 2024.
There is no release date yet for any of the films in Romania.
The Romanian Film Centre, the Romanian Cultural Institute and UPFAR ARGOA are helping the teams of the films to take part in the Locarno IFF.
