Case History of a Sales Meeting
No 21st-century filmmaker has a more accurate and forceful finger on the pulse of global political thought trends than Radu Jude. His movies brim with a completely black-pilled attitude towards his own country’s political and social state amid the populace and an affinity for using social media obsession as a cipher in his cinema. In his latest, he comes out firing in an ironic and didactic rampage unseen since Jean-Luc Godard’s La chinoise (1967). Both film and digital collide in the characteristically wry and unambiguously titled Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World. Continue Reading →
Grbavica
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. Continue Reading →
Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc
Radu Jude's latest is as unsubtle as it is gripping, a strange tryptich about sex, justice, and communal madness.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.)
In Radu Jude’s Golden Bear-winning tenth feature, the zanily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, there is no subtlety. The message is loud and clear from start to finish: The world is a sick place and not a lot of people are capable of empathy. For Emi (Katia Pascariu), a teacher, not having empathy from others means she could her job for a ridiculous reason: An amateur sex tape featuring Emi and her husband is circulating all around the internet, and when the parents of Emi’s students find about this, they demand the school to fire Emi. Jude, however, doesn’t address this plot point right away. Instead, he toys around first, dividing the movie into three equally bizarre parts. Continue Reading →