Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu wins best East European documentary award

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, the three-hour long documentary directed by Andrei Ujica won the Best East European Documentary Award at the 14th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava, the Czech Republic. 'The judges decided to award the prize to an ambitious film of epic proportions. /.../ The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, finding a fine but difficult balance between ‘the tragedy of a ridiculous man' and the excessive arrogance of a leader who loses his legitimacy progressively, is a testament about the challenge to write history today by means of images', the judges explained their decision to give the award. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu has also been recently awarded the Great Prize of the documentary section of the Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), one of the most important events of its kind. The documentary is part of a trilogy on communism, which also features ‘Videograms from a revolution’, created by Andrei Ujica and Harun Farucki in 1992 and ‘Out of the present’ from 1995. This documentary covers 25 years in the life of Nicolae Ceausescu and was made using 1,000 hours of original footage from the Romanian Archives. AGERPRES, editor@romania-insider.com