Doru Segal

A look at a Romanian classroom in the 1980s.

The Segalls’ interest in children’s lives dated from the mid-1960s, when, using a camera placed off-stage, they filmed the end of the year festivities at their daughter’s nursery. The result was Big Little Feelings, which won the Silver Dove at the Leipzig Festival in 1964. In the years that followed, the idea of including their own child in some of their films did not sit well with the political bureaucrats. In the end, she would only feature briefly in two short sequences at the end of this and another documentary, filmed eleven years later with the same children (The Feelings Have Grown, 1975). In both films, Doru Segall proudly makes clear that he is both the film’s cinematographer and the father of the girl in the image—a personal, autobiographic detail unusual for a Sahia film. Over the following years, the Segalls continued to work on documentaries about children, including Exams (1976), The High Schoolers (1978), Parents Meeting (1980), and The School Leavers (1986).

A cine-postcard directed at the Bucharest of 2080, For Our Heirs… is a charming time capsule whose innocuous humour and visuals will soon stand in sharp contrast to the harsh reality of the decade’s austerity measures.

A look at a Romanian classroom in the 1980s.

A look at a Romanian classroom in the 1980s.

The Segalls’ interest in children’s lives dated from the mid-1960s, when, using a camera placed off-stage, they filmed the end of the year festivities at their daughter’s nursery. The result was Big Little Feelings, which won the Silver Dove at the Leipzig Festival in 1964. In the years that followed, the idea of including their own child in some of their films did not sit well with the political bureaucrats. In the end, she would only feature briefly in two short sequences at the end of this and another documentary, filmed eleven years later with the same children (The Feelings Have Grown, 1975). In both films, Doru Segall proudly makes clear that he is both the film’s cinematographer and the father of the girl in the image—a personal, autobiographic detail unusual for a Sahia film. Over the following years, the Segalls continued to work on documentaries about children, including Exams (1976), The High Schoolers (1978), Parents Meeting (1980), and The School Leavers (1986).

A cine-postcard directed at the Bucharest of 2080, For Our Heirs… is a charming time capsule whose innocuous humour and visuals will soon stand in sharp contrast to the harsh reality of the decade’s austerity measures.