California Dreamin' (Endless) 2007

A robust village comedy with satirical bite and a pensive undertow, California Dreamin‘ (Endless) personalises American intervention in the Balkans. The exceptional new generation of Romanian filmmakers suffered a terrible blow when its 27-year-old Wunderkind Cristian Nemescu died in a car crash before he‘d completed editing this, his first feature.

"It is billed as unfinished... but its verve and expansiveness more than make up for the ragged edges... In 1999, a convoy of U.S. soldiers, en route to Kosovo, is detained in a Romanian village by a despotic stationmaster (they‘re missing the necessary paperwork); with most of the locals, from the mayor to the high school‘s female population, intent on ‘seducing‘ the Americans, culture-clash tragicomedy ensues. It‘s not the most subtle allegory... but it has energy, wit and heart to spare and, as an anti-American smackdown, even maintains an affection for its ostensible targets." — Dennis Lim, IFC News