California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit) (Endless)

I'm really excited about the current generation of young European film-makers. This film is one of a string of films that have given birth to this excitement, although it's incredibly sad that the director of this wonderful Romanian film Cristian Nemescu was killed, aged only 27, in a car accident soon after making this film. In fact, before the opening credits, we are told that this is the film as it was when he died, suggesting that there was perhaps more work to be done. I suspect that for the international market he may have been pressured to shorten it from the 2 and a half hours it currently is. There may be a minute silver lining to the grey cloud there - if he'd lived, perhaps Nemescu would've cut his film and perhaps it would've been harmed. That's lots of perhaps's. IMDB logs the "Nesfarsit" or "Endless" of the title's bracket as meaning "Unfinished", suggesting that "Endless" is perhaps a sloppy translation.

Why this film excited me - both of itself and as part of a greater film-making network - was its treatment of story. It reminded me very much of The Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin's remarkable film from earlier this year. In California Dreamin', Nemescu manages like Akin to consider greater implications of politics and history at one step removed by focussing on characters rather than grand ideas or narratives. It's a small story, concerning American troops on their way to Kosovo stuck in a Romanian village after a station master with a grudge stops their train, but it is shot through with the legacy of World War 2, of American intervention in foreign wars, of modern Europe.

I get the feeling - and it is a feeling, a vague, unresearched feeling - that this current generation of European film-makers, those in their 20s and 30s, are able to look at Europe now and in the past in a way that previous generations cannot. We are far away from the terrors of the 20th century to look at them more clearly (though not far away enough for the recriminations to have stopped) whilst at the same time being integral to the unification of Europe in the 21st century. This generation can uniquely learn from the past and direct the future.