Radu Jude

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

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Angela Raducanu in her car

A film of two halves, two time periods and, in fact, two films, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World also tells two stories. In one the everyday travails of a production assistant driving around Bucharest auditioning injured people to appear in a public information film about workplace safety. In the other, snatches of a 1981 movie, Angela Moves On, the adventures of a female taxi driver in the same city 40 years earlier. In the here and now we have Angela Raducanu (Ilinca Manolache), an earthy, forthright woman with a love of a dirty joke. When not charging about the city filming potential (injured) candidates for the film, … Read more

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

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An army officer in front of a burning building

In I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (originally Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari), Romanian auteur Radu Jude takes on the his country’s treatment of the Jews in the Second World War, as part of Hitler’s Final Solution. The title comes from a speech made by Romanian leader Ion Antonescu in 1941, which effectively initiated the campaign of mass murder on the Eastern Front. Romania was allied with the Nazis at the time. Ioana Iacob stars as a stand-in for Jude, playing Mariana, a Romanian director attempting to put on a show about Romanian wartime atrocities and getting pushback at every turn. Researching … Read more

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

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Emilia in face mask

If the prolific Romanian director Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn does nothing else, it wins its lead actress an award for bravery. Its opening scenes feature Katia Pascariu in full-on sex with her screen husband, the pair of them putting it all on tape – her swinging tits, his erect cock, her back end, her entreaties for him to stick it in etc. Pascariu was last seen, high irony, playing a nun in Cristian Mungiu’s bleak 2012 drama Beyond the Hills. What neither the fully consensual Emilia (Pascariu) nor Eugen know is that the strictly-for-home-consumption “tape” is going to wind up on PornHub, and stay there, in spite of their … Read more