I saw some documentaries at this year’s Berlin film festival ‘Berlinale’. As this year’s winner of the Golden Bear is another documentary by Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi I felt motivated to write a rating for Hotel Dallas. A Romanian- American production by Sherng-Lee Huang and Livia Ungur.

The semi-documental film circles around the fact that the famous series Dallas was the only western show allowed on Romanian television in the 1980s. The Ceaușescu regime wanted to demonstrate the corruption of Western lifestyle and made it paradoxically a role model for many Romanians.