California Dreamin'

California Dreamin' (Nesfârșit, 2007) — watch this Romanian tragicomedy online on iFILM. Director Cristian Nemescu died in a road accident in August 2006, leaving the film uncut. His crew completed it, and it went to Cannes the following year and claimed the Grand Prix at Un Certain Regard — awarded to a director who never saw it finished.

1999, the Kosovo War. A NATO train carrying radar equipment rolls into a small Romanian village and gets stopped cold by Doiaru, the stationmaster — local power broker, petty operator, and a man who has spent fifty years waiting for Americans to show up so he could settle a score. Armand Assante plays the US Army captain trying to reason his way out of something that has no reasonable logic. Maria Dinulescu is Doiaru's daughter, drawn toward the soldiers for reasons that have nothing to do with geopolitics.

The film runs over two and a half hours, and Nemescu fills every minute: a collision between NATO and a village grudge, played as farce with a melancholy aftertaste. Stream California Dreamin' (2007) on iFILM.