Written and directed by Piotr Domalewski
The restoration of capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe in 1989-91 brought about a social, cultural and intellectual regression of immense proportions.
The decades of Stalinist crimes and the confusion they generated in the population about socialism, combined with the greed, ambition and stupidity of the newly “liberated” bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers, produced a culture that was largely as backward and empty as it was ignorant and unfeeling.
As if emerging single file from a dense fog, interesting films have appeared from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia in particular. The best of the new films exhibit telltale signs of disillusionment with the lies about capitalist restoration and begin to confront the new social realities, although many issues remain.