(CN) - Romania's Communist regime confiscated a "state-of-the-art film laboratory and studio" in the 1940s and two Angeleno expatriates claim in court that it belongs to their family, and they want it back.
Jak and Edward Sukyas sued Romania and RADEF Romania Film on March 16, in Los Angeles Federal Court.
Both plaintiffs were born in Bucharest, Romania. Jak Sukyas became a U.S. citizen in 1990 and his brother, a citizen of Canada since 1977, became a U.S. permanent resident in the 1990s.
The brothers say their father, a Turkish citizen, and their uncle, a U.S. citizen, both of Armenian descent, founded Cinegrafia Romana, or CIRO Films, a post-production laboratory and studio, in the mid 1930s.
Based in Bucharest, CIRO Films "was the industry-leading motion picture production and post-production company for the entire Balkan region with substantial U.S. business," according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs' uncle, who lived in the United States in the 1920s, began sending short runs of Charlie Chaplin films to a friend in Romania for distribution. After he enlisted the plaintiffs' father as his agent in Romania, the company became the leading film distributor in Eastern Europe, according to the complaint.
"By the late 1920s to early 1930s, their business had exploded and the elder Sukyas brothers had established themselves as prominent figures in the Eastern European film distribution business by securing distribution deals with Columbia Pictures, United Artists, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and Pathé News in America and bringing the burgeoning, young Hollywood film industry to Romania," the lawsuit states.
In the late 1930s, the elder Sukyas brothers bought CIRO, a film laboratory with production and postproduction studios. It operated out of a three-story lab building, an office building, two large studio buildings and other facilities.
In addition to commercial film work, the company handled copying and subtitling of foreign films and of government-sponsored newsreels. CIRO produced the first spoken motion picture in Romania, the brothers say.
"CIRO continually updated its equipment for the production and post-production of films to ensure that the company only operated using state-of-the-art technology. By following this reinvestment business model, by the eve of World War II in the late 1930s CIRO was extremely valuable and worth many multiple times more than it was when it had been established," according to the 29-page complaint.
The young Sukyas brothers claim the Communist government illegally took their family's business in 1948, before Romania passed laws to nationalize most private property.
"Plaintiffs' uncle and father, brothers Melik Soukias and Vahram Sukyas respectively, were equal owners of CIRO when the Romanian Communist government illegally expropriated CIRO in 1948 in violation of international law, by way of a sham stock purchase made under duress from threats of imprisonment and threats to safety," the complaint states. "Since that time, the company has been operated by state-owned successor-in-interest companies, which continue to do business in the United States."
When the rise of the Communist regime in Romania brought increased antagonism to foreigners, Melik Soukias returned to the United States in the late 1940s, leaving the family business in his brother's hands.
