Eight Postcards from Utopia and Romanian wines

This trippy video collage is reminiscent of a YouTube rabbit hole | Saga film

How I found myself paying to watch an hour’s worth of TV ads I’m not quite sure. What is usually the bane of the TV-watching experience, director Radu Jude and philosopher/co-director Christian Ferencz-Flatz have turned into an experimental documentary that observes Romania’s transition from socialism to capitalism post-Revolution.

Comprised solely of Romanian TV ads aired in from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, this trippy video collage is reminiscent of a YouTube rabbit hole: from mouthwash and cleaning products to beer and sex workers, we watch flashes of Romanian society in a seemingly disjointed sequence of commercials. In doing so, Jude and Ferencz-Flatz hope, we can gain a vivid insight into their aspirations, values and domestic lives.

There are indeed insights aplenty: adverts for shareholdings in particular – which manipulatively play on the fear of missing out on opportunity – highlight the aggressive adoption of US-style capitalism and the push of this shiny new economic philosophy into the family home. Already made a profit from investing? Brilliant, beams one woman who has just made millions of leu. Now you can re-invest it into the Romanian Investment Fund. 

Women are either homemakers or sex objects, the camera leering over their long legs and smiling, seductive faces, but then that’s nothing shocking in the advertising industry. Meanwhile men are either recruited into the macho ideal through army ads, or domesticated husbands keen to drink any worries of economic turmoil away with a frosted bottle of beer (“Good stuff stays good through the bad times,” gleams another ad).

The commercials are shown in rapid succession with no grounding narration, so I almost wondered whether I had fallen asleep scrolling through Instagram reels, further amplified by the decision to cut some ads halfway through, often before you can tell what it is they’re advertising. Those with gnat-sized attention spans rejoice. 

This unusually passive documentary is anything but a hard sell | Saga film

We are given an illusion of structure through the chapter headings (beginning with ‘The History of Romania’ going through to ‘Money Talks’, ‘Masculine Feminine’ et cetera and ending with arguably the weakest chapter ‘The Ages of Man’), but – and pardon the pun – I’m not sure I quite buy it. 

While chapters such as ‘Magique Mirage’ (which covers commercials that use elements of the fantastical) are neatly categorised, most struggle to differentiate between the overlapping themes and begin to merge into a phantasmagorical fever dream; one that, if you’ve read your history books – and I think this documentary takes for granted that you have – juxtaposes against the dire and violent climate plaguing the country at the time. 

Whether these adverts serve to distract from the horrors of Romania’s brutal past and present uncertainty, or provide optimism to a country that is, at the time, struggling to define itself after decades of communism – Jude and Ferencz-Flatz leave interpretation to the viewer. This unusually passive documentary is anything but a hard sell. 

Onto wine which is of course woven into Romania's Soviet history: after decades of quantity-over-quality policies, the wine industry continued to suffer post-Revolution as a lack of investment and generations worth of bad winemaking practice meant Romanian bottles were still seen as cheap and unremarkable.

However, its wines have gone from strength to strength and Romania is now the fifth largest wine exporter in Europe, and the second largest export market in the US outside of the EU. 

To understand why, it really is worth trying for yourself; while a lot higher in quality than the 1990s, Romanian bottles are still great value for money. 

Take for example Solomonar Reserve Red: inspired by the French Bordeaux blends, it uses merlot as its primary grape, blended with cabernet sauvignon and the most famous Romanian grape, fetească neagră. The French grapes provide the usual red plum and blackberry profiles, while the fetească neagră lingers on the palate with notes of vanilla and black pepper. 

Not that awards are an indicator of quality, but it is noteworthy that Romania won an International Wine Challenge (IWC) award for this wine's 2020 vintage. An international wine for an increasingly international country. 

Plus watching Eight Postcards is like being stuck in Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun music video for an hour so you'll need at least a glass of this – and/or a shot of Imperial Vodka.

Eight Postcards from Utopia premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 12. Solomonar Reserve Red (£10.99/£8.99 mix six) is available from Majestic.