In the Venice Film Festival premiere of “The New Year That Never Came,” set during the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime in Romania and whose exclusive trailer debuts at Variety, you can’t trust anyone. Not even Santa Claus.

“After all, he could be collaborating with the Securitate [the secret police]! Maybe that's the moral of this film: always check Santa's resume,” laughs director Bogdan Mureşanu.

It follows several protagonists on the verge of a nervous breakdown, who make life-changing decisions in December 1989. An aspiring actress who is asked to perform in a propaganda-heavy TV special, two boys who are on the verge of fleeing, a woman whose entire life is literally on the verge of collapsing and a little boy who has just sent a letter to Santa Claus. The problem is that he happened to say that his father would like to see "Uncle Nic" dead.

"I wanted this film to feel like a symphony and give a good overview of the society at the time. I knew the beginning and I knew the end. In the middle I just decided to play," he says.