Institutional corruption has become a recurrent cinematic theme since the emergence of the Romanian New Wave in 2001, when Cristi Puiu’s Hitchcockian road movie about life in post-Ceaușescu Romania, Stuff and Dough premiered in Cannes. Since then, films like Corneliu Porumboiu’s cerebral thriller Police, Adjective and Cristian Mungiu’s striking drama on moral decline, Graduation have navigated the shortcomings and dead ends of Romanian beauraucracy. However, Ioana Uricaru’s debut Lemonade, about a young Romanian woman’s Kafka-esque struggle to obtain a United States green card, suggests things aren’t much better in the “Land of the Free”. We spoke to the Romanian director about her own immigration experience earlier this year at FEST - New Directors | New Films Festival, where she was awarded the festival’s Golden Lynx award for best fiction feature.

Empathetically exploring the timely and contentious issue of U.S. immigration, Uricaru’s film follows Mara (Mălina Manovici) a nurse and single mother who has come to America on a temporary work visa. We are introduced to Mara during a medical examination, required by U.S. immigration authorities. The lack of control that comes to define the character’s entire experience in the film is felt immediately, when Mara is vaccinated by a nurse without consent. “My immigration experience was a combination of extraordinary frustration and deeply satisfying small triumphs.” Explains Uricaru, when asked how much of Lemonade’s plot was based on the difficulties she faced obtaining residency in America. “Emigrating is one of the most effective ways of testing one’s limits. Like Mara, there were moments when I thought all was lost, and moments when I surprised myself with the things I was able to do because I had to.”

European emigration to North America is a complex phenomenon, with international migration one of the most spectacular social changes to affect post-communist Romania. “I interviewed many immigrants to the US, especially women with small children, and gathered narrative elements from their stories.” Explains Uricaru when asked about how Lemonade fits into the wider narrative of recent US immigration stories such as; Man Push Cart, In America and The Visitor. “My film presents those same obstacles, and adaptation strategies, but a deep structuring element for me was the psychology of displacement, the internal conflict of someone who is faced with decisions they weren’t prepared for.”

“Emigrating is one of the most effective ways of testing one’s limits”

Mara’s American dream quickly becomes a nightmare when her seemingly benevolent immigration officer Moji (Steve Bacic) tricks her into a no-win situation. Their interviews together are initially conducted with professionalism, but when circumstances conspire against her, Mara is placed in a vulnerable situation that Moji, a man very much aware of the extraordinary power he wields, wastes no time in exploiting. “I was interested in the question of; what are you ready to do in order to be successful in your immigration story? When Mara decided to try and become an American, she accepted that there would be obstacles. But by the time she is faced with the fine print, she’s already reached a point of no return. Once you’ve done a couple of things that were hard and unpleasant, but had positive results, you become invested in this project and it becomes harder and harder to quit.”