Romanian Capitalism on Film: Microhistories of Hope, Anxiety and Adaptation

Romanian Capitalism on Screen examines contemporary Romanian cinema as a testimony to pivotal aspects of Romania’s postsocialist economy and culture. It complements existing accounts of economic and cultural history by utilizing the perspective of socially engaged, high-quality cinema to provide enlightening insights into the country’s emerging capitalist culture.

Focusing on key feature films of the New Romanian Cinema, the monograph presents a methodological framework for analyzing cinematic texts as ＂histories of the present.＂ It addresses the economic imagination of emerging entrepreneurial classes, the value of human life within neoliberal contexts, the struggles of the middle and working classes during periods of radical economic and social transformation, the mental mapping of globalization from a European periphery, and emigration as a form of economic revenge.