Radu Jude Is one of the most thought-provoking filmmakers of this generation and he has accolades all over the world to prove it. As a Romanian filmmaker, he uses his sharp sense of humor to reveal world truths by leaning into the history from his countries dark past and using it to tell stories that are universally relatable. His films contain multitudes.
Thanks to Big World Pictures and Magnolia Pictures for helping to put together this collection of Radu films that I personally believe has a little something for everyone. If you were to start in any particular order I might suggest watching AEFRIM! Radu’s first jump back in time revealing the foundations of modern Romanian society were laid by Romani slaves. This story is told as a dark satire told through the relationship of a father and son in black and white and won Radu his first Silver Bear award for Best Director at the Berlin Internation Film Festival.
SACRED HEARTS was released the following year and digs deep into the acceptance of death through a refreshing dose of absurdist humor. The film itself was a bit overlooked but it should not remain that way. It was my first introduction to Jude and has since become one of my favorites.
I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS is about society choosing to forget its own history. A young theater director wishes to recreate the 1941 Odessa Massacre of Jews by the Romanian Army and enrages a city official.
The next two films in the lineup are documentaries both done in nontraditional styles. UPPERCASE PRINT was written as a play and Jude used archival Romanian TV from the era to tell the story as a film. THE EXIT OF THE TRAINS is an essay told in a montage of a long list of names accompanied by archive photographs and documents ranging from eye-witness accounts and testimonies from the post-war trials to interviews with survivors and private diary entries from the pogroms in Romania during WWII.
Let me lighten the mood a bit with BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN and if you have read this far down please allow me the chance to be a bit hyperbolic. STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW and watch this movie again, or for this first time, or 15th time. Radu Jude is a genius and if all of his other movies didn’t tickle your fancy, then this surely won’t, but that’s alright because we have already established that your life is meaningless.
This movie, in what can only be described as pure and unadulterated brilliance, lays out the meaning of life in three loosely connected parts. Unlike other films that may attempt to do the same things, after telling you what the meaning of life is, it then tells you how to live it.
Show this film to every man, woman, and child, as long as they are of consenting age because there is a fair amount of graphic nudity. BUT LIFE IS NOT PRUDE, nor is it well mannered or well-manicured! It’s nasty and hairy, unkempt, and raw. So accept this film as your new toolkit to life. Some of you may take off your clothes to run in the streets, forever changed and feeling as though you have been handed a new gospel. We will accept you.
-Ahbra Perry, Head of Alamo on Demand