🇳🇴 Les denne artikkelen på norsk
First things first: this is not a film review. Although I am an actor and an acting teacher, this post is not about the film. It is about Romania.
The Bodnariu case received extensive media coverage in Romania about ten years ago. I know about it only from Romanian television. I have nothing to say about the case.
This post is partly about parenting, partly about Romania, and partly about the patterns, clichés, generalisations and prejudices that can arise.
Now, straight to the point — and the point is me: I am 49 years old, and I spent the first twelve years of my life trapped in the appalling communist regime imposed on us by Ceaușescu. There was almost no food in the shops, you could not say anything negative about the communist regime, and you could not leave the country whenever you wished. Getting a passport and permission to leave depended on approvals controlled by the regime. These were granted arbitrarily and often more readily if you had the right “connections”.
If you told a joke about Ceaușescu or listened to Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, you could come under the scrutiny of the Securitate — the regime’s political police. Opposition, dissidence and statements perceived as hostile to the regime could lead to surveillance, threats, interrogation, arrest or imprisonment.
In my childhood, in Bucharest in the 1980s, Santa Claus was called Moș Gerilă — Father Frost. The newspapers wrote only about how wonderful life was under communism, while television broadcast for just a few hours a day, mostly featuring or praising “the Beloved Son of the Nation” and “Comrade Elena Ceaușescu”.
As I remember it, homes were cold. Cooking oil, flour and sugar were rationed. You could spend the entire night queuing for meat or bananas unless you had “pile” — connections, in other words. Instead of real coffee, people drank “nechezol”, a coffee substitute, and salami was usually made from soy. I did not drink Coca-Cola or Fanta until 1990, even though my family was not poor.
At my school, some teachers beat their pupils without the parents getting upset. There was even a saying about it: “Bătaia e ruptă din rai” — roughly, “A good beating is heaven-sent.” Today, corporal punishment of children is prohibited by law in Romania.
As a child, I was subjected to physical violence at school and at home. Had I been born ten years later, I would have escaped it.
Of all my friends who have become parents since 2010, when I became a father myself for the first time, I do not know a single one who has subjected their children to violence or abuse. There are laws prohibiting violence and the ill-treatment of children, just as there are laws prohibiting the mistreatment of and cruelty to animals.
Even so, there are still parents in Romania today who are violent towards their own children. This is not because of “cultural differences”, but because of alcohol, a lack of parenting education and a disregard for the law.
I believe today, just as I did when I lived in Romania, that it is essential for a child to grow up knowing that no adult, regardless of their authority, has the right to subject them to violence, ill-treatment or abuse.
As for the film, I am very curious to see what reactions it will spark here in Norway. I consider it a necessary film, both for Norway and for Romania.
I am sending love to both Romania and Norway, and I can hardly wait to see how this film will be received here, in the country where the story takes place.
Best of luck to everyone who made the film, and greetings to everyone who knows me and worked on it!
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