“The regime needed to justify the failures of socialist reforms. The country’s economics and the people’s morale kept getting worse. The Party changed leaders and pretended that the system was fine. The studios were happy to let us make films, even if they were censored, shelved or screened in festivals only. As long as a copy existed, when the regime changed again, the officials could say that they had already foreseen it all, and had even allowed a film critical of the old leadership to be made.”