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Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

After the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanians were crazed with happiness. People who never met each other before hugged each other in the streets - convinced that tomorrow things would look different. Then came the many disappointments.

I was born near Bucharest, but my parents came to France a year later. We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores - its anti-Semitism for example.

The post-totalitarian malady has taken its most acute form in Romania. And it has taken place for very specific reasons. The repression here has been more cruel, more brutal, than in other states caught in the inferno of a 'socialist paradise.'

One of the most difficult times in my life was when I escaped from Romania in November of 1989.

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. made me very, very sad, and I mourned and I cried like many of our citizens did.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

I went to Yugoslavia to make a movie. People saw me there and asked me to do a movie in Germany. And that led to a movie in Italy. Before I knew it, I was in Europe for most of the next 10 years.

I escaped from my home country, Bulgaria, to Czechoslovakia and then to the West.

Of course, I grew up in Communist Romania, but I am happy to say that now our country is democratic, and prospering, since the revolution in 1989.