A whole country was hoping to see the last day of Ceausescu s regime but no one knew when that day was to come.


Elena is a promising actress in a big theater, called to replace a TV actress who fled the country in the middle of filming a propaganda show. Thinking he has a real career ahead of him, he accepts the proposal, not realizing that he has to compromise his beliefs and identity and recite patriotic poetry. Being now part of a failing system, of course, she also falls with it. Tibi and Vlad, exasperated by the system, try to escape the hermetically sealed country by crossing the Danube. Just when they thought they had finally reached a safe land in Serbia, they realize they are stranded on an island, in the middle of the river, without a boat. They get stuck, oblivious to the fact that they are now free. (Deputy-engineer) deputy engineer Dorin Popa is asked to become an informant of the Securitate. After his refusal to do so, someone frames him, making him pass as a traitor to the system. Now he is forced to comply or he will rot in prison. However, he has the courage (or the stupidity) to postpone his answer for the officer who recruits him. Under pressure, sign just when the system crashes.


Award winning writer Bogdan Muresanu has shifted from literature and advertising to cinema with equal success. AS A SCRIPTWRITER: In 2008, he won the best short in HBO TIFF script writing competition with “The Human Torch” who received, production funding from the Romanian CNC the following year and premiered in 2013. Also in 2009 two more of Bogdan’s scripts won at the Romanian CNC, development funding- “1985” and “The Magician”. Bogdan’s next screenplay, “Where is Sophia?” won best feature script in Oaxaca Film Festival, Mexico (2012) and an honorable mention in Canada International Film Festival, Vancouver (2013) . The script is currently in pre production with Adenium Films (Romania) director Anton Groves (UK-Romania). In 2014, “Opinci”, a script for animation, directed by Anton Groves, was shortlisted for Robert Bosch award and then founded by CNC in the same year. In 2015, “The other man”, a script for a feature to be directed by Stephan Komandarev, Bulgaria. 1985, a scriot for a feature film, developed in the Mediteranean Film Institute, won the best pitch award in TIFF, Transylvania. As a director, he produced and directed his first short film in 2012, based on his own script “Half Shaved”. It won the Audience Award at “Anonimul” IFF Sf.Gheorghe (Romania) and was shown in festivals in Montreal, Cinequest, Cleveland, Reykjavik, York, Oaxaca, Maremetraggio, Lille, Reggio.
In 2016, Bogdan finished his next short called “Spid”. Same year, a short art film “Negruzzi 14” was show-cased at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016.In 2017, the short animation called The Magician was undergoing pre-production while the short fiction The Christmas Gift was shot in March.


This is a film composed of a few intertwined stories whose characters are completely unaware that their present ordeals will come to an end the very next day. It is a black humor comedy but filmed and acted in a very realistic manner since Communism provided enough moments of absurdity. The stories (The Christmas Gift is one of them though here it is longer, of course) share a common feeling of useless desperation in a moment when the so much hated regime had reached the climax of its nonsense. The characters are also from various walks of life so that we can have an extended vision of those last hours of Ceausescu’s hideous reign. They all take place from the morning of 20th of December to the next day when the dictatorship began to crumble.