Emergency Exit/The New Year That Never Came The film comprises six interconnected stories, one of them co-written with actress-screenwriter Iulia Lumânare. Interestingly, the feature recycles (and completes) The Christmas Gift and another, unreleased short film, New Year’s Eve. One of the protagonists is Ştefan Silvestru, the director of the national television station, who has to deal with a career-ending issue: an actress who appeared in a sketch to be broadcast on New Year’s Eve has defected the country. Silvestru’s son, Laurenţiu, who plans to defect by swimming across the Danube to Yugoslavia, is the protagonist of another story, all six of them exploring the atmosphere in Bucharest before the “end of the world”, or the fall of the regime.