EN: Discussion with the award-winning Romanian director about his career, cinema & more.

A filmmaker, but also a historian, an archaeologist, who is able to dig into the folds of untold histories, a remarkable storyteller, who stages the drama of our historical unconsciousness. Radu Jude loves words, let them build and destroy the social bonds, makes of cinema a humanist forum of open questions, where we understand through experience. And he will now speak directly to the CinEast’s audience. Starting with his recently awarded Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, we will discuss his artistic works and passions (talk with extracts of films moderated by Giuseppe Di Salvatore, filmexplorer.ch).

Radu Jude is a Romanian director and screenwriter. With dozens of film awards, including Berlin, Karlovy Vary, Locarno and Sundance, Radu Jude is one of the most prominent personalities of contemporary Romanian cinema.

Creator of thought-provoking films that subtly defy the audience’s expectations, he explores the intricate relationships between present and past, fact, fiction and historical memory through dark chapters in his country’s history. Radu Jude graduated in film directing from the Media University of Bucharest in 2003. As an assistant director he worked on Costa-Gavras’ Amen (2002) and Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2004). He has made around a hundred commercials and several short films, including the most awarded Romanian short film ever, The Tube with a Hat (2006). After the release of his debut feature The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), a satire of the conditions in Romanian society, he was considered to be another film-maker drawing on the aesthetic principles of the Romanian New Wave. In his third film Aferim! (2015), which won the 2015 Berlinale Silver Bear for the Best Director, however, he changed direction and style. He went to the distant past and instead of contemporary events, he drew inspiration from historical sources. The international premiere of his documentary essay The Dead Nation in Locarno 2017, with its focus on the anti-Semitic crimes of Romanian fascism, thematically anticipated his black-humoured historical disputation I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018), which won the Crystal Globe for the Best Film in Karlovy Vary in 2018. In 2020, Jude returned to the Berlin International Film Festival with his film Uppercase Print, and one year later, in 2021, he won the Berlinale Golden Bear for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.