Metronom

Betrayal wears many faces in this award-winning debut that recreates the hardships of life for young Romanians in the 1970s.

Teenage Ana is in love with Sorin, who coolly informs her that his family has finally received permission to emigrate to Germany. It’s autumn in Bucharest, 1972; Nicolae Ceaușescu’s oppressive regime has controlled Romanians’ private lives for seven years. Ana enjoys rebellious moments listening to the illicit ‘Metronom’ program on Radio Free Europe, drinking and dancing with her friends. But when one of these parties attracts the attention of the Securitate – the government’s secret police agency – Ana must decide what she stands for.

Director Alexandru Belc took home Un Certain Regard’s Best Director award for this accomplished debut feature that reveals his debt to the Romanian New Wave: in the past, he has worked for both Cristian Mungiu (whose film R.M.N. also screens at MIFF 70) and Corneliu Porumboiu (The Whistlers, MIFF 2019). Yet Metronom also shows the development of a distinctive visual style, one informed by its maker’s background in documentary making. Indeed, beginning life as a documentary, the film is a post-’68 generation coming-of-age drama, shot with urgency and attuned to the paradoxes of this tumultuous time and to the immobilising nature of oppressive regimes.

“Slow, stylish, richly imagined … An intelligent, invested homage to this doomed Romanian generation, robbed of the freedoms of adulthood before they’d even got to sample them.” – Variety