Romanian short film in the official selection at 24th Beverly Hills Film Festival

Document 56, a Romanian short feature by Christopher Landry, will have its world premiere at The Beverly Hills Film Festival, where it has been chosen in the Official Selection. The event’s 24th edition is scheduled for May 1-5.

Director Landry and composer Călin Țopa will be in attendance for the BHFF screening.

The Romanian short tells the strange-but-true story of the covert Cold War alliance between the American CIA and the Romanian Securitate (secret police) to finance the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

The script, co-written by Landry and Doru Lupeanu (Superman, Spiderman or Batman) from a story by Christopher Landry, dramatizes the meeting between CIA and Securitate operatives to provide military supplies and uniforms to the army of Iraq in support of their war against Iran in the early 1980s.

Director Christopher Landry said: “As an American living in Romania for many years, the misinterpretation of language is something that continues to fascinate me. That and my love for the history of my adopted home made this a natural subject for my first film.”

“I had heard stories of the CIA secretly supporting Saddam Hussein through Romania, and when I conducted research I found that not only was it true, but far more bizarre than I had ever imagined.”

The cast includes Ștefan Iancu, Alexandru Georgescu, Guy Oliver-Watts, Robert Marshall, and Irina Margareta Nistor.

Christopher Landry works as an independent producer and assistant director, most recently on the limited series The Gray House for Paramount (Romania) and the Tarot for Sony (Serbia), which also premieres in May. He is also the author of Marele Ecran in Epoca de Aur, a study of film posters and filmmaking in Romania during the communist Nicolae Ceaușescu era. This is his first film as a writer and director.

(Photo source: courtesy of Christopher Landry)