Tales from the Golden Age

Spanning six tongue-in-cheek vignettes, Christian Mungiu's anthology film finds black comedy in Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu's autocratic rule.

During Romania’s communist era, whispered stories were passed around. Assembling five directors, including himself, Cristian Mungiu draws together six urban legends. Are they factual? It's impossible to say and deliciously ambiguous.

Curator's note
Anthology films get a bit of a mixed reaction from audiences. Often, despite the calibre of directors involved, the results can be incongruent jigsaws with uneven cadences and less-than-satisfying narrative arcs that hook and release.

Cristian Mungiu’s charming Tales from the Golden Age manages to avoid the pitfalls of the anthology film, most likely due to Mungiu's hands-on approach: he wrote and produced all parts. Five different directors contributed to the film, including Mungiu, but who directed what? – we don't know. Keeping directorial credits ambiguous, the film is consistent and creatively collective, perhaps befitting communism itself.

Tales from the Golden Age premiered at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, where it screened in the Un Certain Regard section. In 2024, a follow-up project expanding to stories in other Eastern European countries was announced to be in pre-production.