The book analyzes the transition from communism and a planned economy to democracy and capitalism, focusing specifically on the case of Romania. More specifically it analyzes how the transition is reflected in the cultural space of films. The research highlights the importance of films in reflecting political struggles within society: struggles over basic definitions of the nation, state, (gendered) self, and symbolic Other. This is accomplished by building on the theory of cinematic nationhood and via the method of relational constructivism combined with insights from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. It is an interdisciplinary research that would appeal to a wide postgraduate and undergraduate audience specializing in: transitions, nationalism and state formation, gender studies, Eastern European film and interdisciplinary methods.

This book offers an interdisciplinary mode of analyzing transitions from communism and planned economy to democracy and capitalism focusing on how the various social and political transformations are reflected within one hundred Romanian films produced during communism, transition, and post-transition.