Director of collective Alexander Nanau Refuses Romanian National Honour BUCHAREST: Internationally acclaimed documentary director Alexander Nanau has turned down the “Cultural Merit” medal from Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on the occasion of Romania’s Day of National Culture celebrated on 15 January 2021. The Emmy-award winning director is protesting the lack of government support for the film industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “As a filmmaker who at this moment is attracting the biggest international attention to the Romanian culture and cinema, I consider it would be hypocrisy to accept this decoration since the cinema and its institutional structures are brain dead. From March 2020 till now the authorities not only have refused to address this topic, but moreover have aggravated it by neglect and lack of initiative,” Nanau said in a letter posted on Facebook on 12 January 2021 and widely distributed in the media and on social platforms.