Football and art: The "Golden Generation" is now playing on the big screen

Football lovers with more life experience have the opportunity to experience for a few tens of minutes the emotions of 30 years ago, when the national team played in the final tournament of the World Cup in the USA. The story is not only for the elderly, the young can find out on this occasion how things really were with the generation of Hagi, Popescu, Răducioiu, Dumitrescu. It fit well and could fit even better. Why it wasn't like that can be found out even from this movie.

"Go Romania! - The Story of the Golden Generation" is the first film about Romanian football from the glory years, which will be broadcast in cinemas throughout the country starting from March 1. According to the makers of the film: "The beginning of 2024 will bring to the big screens the most extensive and detailed film made in Romania about the Golden Generation of Romanian football. "Go Romania! - The Story of the Golden Generation" will be released in cinemas across the country on March 1, 2024 and will tell the complex story of the most vivid and intense period in Romanian football: the years 1980-2000, a period in which the National Team of Romania reached third in the world in the FIFA ranking and achieved the record of three consecutive qualifications for three world championships (1990-1994-1998) and two consecutive qualifications for two European football championships (1996 and 2000). But also that of the important achievements at club level, from the beginning of the "80s, which announced the great performance that was to come a decade later. A story never told until now, about the astonishing performances of a generation that put both football and Romania on the world map. And who offered an entire country the most beautiful gifts: identity, in an era of uniformity, and a lot of hope, in one of transition". "Go Romania! - The Story of the Golden Generation", directed by Claudiu Mitcu, based on a script signed by the writer Andrei Crăciun and produced by Călin Creţu, Simion Apreutese and Loredana Apreutese (Headline Management Agency), is the first film of those times, of the "white nights" of celebration. It will celebrate in 2024 the 30th anniversary of the most glorious moment of Romanian football, namely the qualification in the quarter-finals of the 1994 World Football Championship USA. The film production will bring them, both through archival images and through interviews made especially for this documentary on Gheorghe Hagi, Ilie Dumitrescu, Miodrag Belodedici, Gheorghe Mihali, Dorinel Munteanu, Tibor Selymes, Florin Răducioiu, Ionuţ Lupescu, Basarab Panduru, Ion Vlădoiu, Adrian Mutu, Marius Lăcătuş, Gavril Balint, Adrian Ilie, Gheorghe Craioveanu, Ioan Ovidiu Sabău, Constantin Gâlcă, along with the goalkeepers of the National Team, Florin Prunea and Bogdan Stelea. For the making of the film and the series, over 200 hours of interviews and illustrations were recorded, both in different places in Romania and abroad, more specifically in Italy, South Korea and Spain, where the production team spoke with Cristian Chivu, Dan Petrescu and Gheorghe Popescu. They will talk about reporting on victories and the pain of failure, but also what professionalism and dedication meant for everyone. About how they experienced the first exits from the country, the shock of meeting the West in different countries, the money they earned, their relationship with fame and where they were at the time of the Revolution. Moreover, the film also reveals the other perspective, about how they were received and looked at from outside, how foreigners saw what was happening in Romania and how this generation and their successes gave birth to respect and curiosity for Romania and gave an image and a position of the Romanians, outside the country. The producers announce that the story of the Golden Generation will not miss the coaches Anghel Iordănescu, who was with the athletes at the 1994 (USA) and 1998 (France) World Cups, as well as at the 1996 European Championship (England), Dumitru Dumitriu, second coach at the World Championship in America in 1994, Emeric Ienei who worked for the National Team at the World Championship in Italy 1990, at the European Championship in Belgium and Holland 2000 and won the Champions Cup with Steaua in 1986. A premiere interview will also offer the team doctor at the 1994 World Cup, at the 1998 World Cup (in France) and at the 1996 (in England) and 2000 (in Belgium and Holland) European championships, Pompiliu Popescu. Alongside them will also be present in exclusive interviews the former president of the Romanian Football Federation, Mircea Sandu, the businessman Ioan Becali and the journalists Ionel Stoica, Ovidiu Ioaniţoaia, Mircea M. Ionescu and the writer Radu Paraschivescu. The preparations, documentation, filming and editing of the materials for the film "Come on, Romania! - The story of the Golden Generation" took place over the period of a whole year, 2023, and the production work included the viewing of over 150 hours of images from all FIFA, UEFA and TVR archives with matches, reports, shows and news from that period. To these was added a first selection of 2,000 pictures and several hundred reference articles from that time.