Romania, the 1980s. The Ceausescu regime enforces the party line with equal parts of intimidation and tireless, finicky nit-picking. The people are hungry, desperate and tangled up in red tape. Meat, eggs, bread and petrol are rationed – in fact, the only things not in short supply are stories.

It is this wealth of urban myths that provides the material for a group of Romanian film-makers who lived through that most difficult of times and who are now more than ready to see the funny side. Tales from the Golden Age is a collective work from four directors, the best known of whom is Cristian Mungiu, who won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Mungiu initiated the project, collected the true(ish) stories from his fellow countrymen, wrote the screenplays for each of the segments and directed two of them. But the identity of which director filmed which story is kept under wraps.

It seems fair to assume, however, that it is Mungiu’s assured hand that guides us through the first of the tales, The Legend of the Official Visit. A small rural hamlet is flung into turmoil as its inhabitants prepare for a Communist Party motorcade that is scheduled to pass through the following day. Cows are scrubbed down, comely local wenches equipped with flags and the countryside scoured for some appropriately patriotic-looking pigeons. Dour party inspectors arrive and immediately order the removal of the merry-go-round at the edge of town.

But as the day draws to a close and the locally brewed hooch works its magic, the inspector decrees that everyone should take a ride on the contraption. Big mistake.

What’s glorious about this perfectly judged little film is not just its hilarious visual punch line, but also the wealth of detail included about the absurd pedantry of party diktats. Every packed frame is layered with bemused villagers, toiling pointlessly in the name of communism.

It’s a bold move to kick off the movie with what is unquestionably the strongest of the segments. And certainly, some of the other four tales don’t have quite the same immediate appeal: The Legend of the Chicken Driver is a story of doomed love and misappropriated eggs that could have done with a tighter edit.

More successful is The Legend of the Party Photographer, a Kafkaesque tale of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the party’s publicity machine — a cabal of dangerous, grey-faced men whose main responsibility seems to have been to make sure that Ceausescu never appeared shorter than any other head of state, particularly not one from the West.

While this wry, sometimes poignant collection ultimately runs a little long, it serves as a useful introduction to the talent that makes Romania the place to look for exciting new voices in cinema.

(12A, 131mins)

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