UK Premiere: Victoria

Ana Vlad & Adi Voicu / România / 2010 / 54min

A story of love between people and their city, fuelled by the forced relationship between the lack of city identity and the need for justification of identity by those who live there.

The first thing you see when you enter the city of Victoria is a stone monument shaped like the letter V. V for Victora, V for the communist dream...

Victoria is the first city built from scratch in Romania, a surviving symbol of an era that has left behind an identity crisis with no solution.

The Red Ucea Colony is a communist invention. When the authorities then felt that it was more of a new generation, they changed the name to City of Socialist Victory. All people were working at a chemical plant, which is now closed. “Chemistry” has been taken effect over the years, and those remaining in the city have witnessed the disappearance of their fellow citizens and former colleagues.

With the changes in Romanian society, foreign investors have emerged in Victoria. Now, locals are terrorized, every evening by a stench, they say, highly toxic emanating from an American factory. The emanations happen at nightfall, the air becoming thick with for a few hours. Victoria City residents are subjected to unbearable smell, their anxiety is compounded by past traumatic experience.
 
The only tradition of city life today is the legacy of Chemistry, once one of the great pride of the country. In a city that clings to past values, the only ones to which it can identify with, the Victorian universe is bizarre and full of life.

Presented in association with the Romanian Cultural Institute, London.