Radu Jude takes two days in the life of an overworked Romanian production assistant, Angela (the incredible Ilinca Manolache), and gives us an urgent, pissed off, sourly funny polemic on the state of late capitalism that anyone can relate to. Tasked with filming half a dozen audition tapes with accident victims for a corporate work safety video, Angela also makes time to post scabrous TikTok videos as her cult alter-ego, Bobita, using a filter to transform herself into a misogynist Andrew Tate clone. On top of which Jude also throws in parallel clips from a (genuine) 1981 Romanian movie, Angela Moves On, about a Bucharest taxi driver played by Dorina Lazar. The Godard of our times, Jude is an essential filmmaker for anyone serious about political cinema. Exploitation, discrimination and hypocrisy are his targets; dialectics are his dynamite. Adventurous, audacious, infuriating and inspiring, the film won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno last month to set beside the Golden Bear he won at Berlin for Bad Luck Banging, or Looney Porn two years ago.
The film further confirms Radu Jude as one of the most idiosyncratic, uncompromising, and intellectually vigorous of living filmmakers.
Slant Magazine
Special Jury Prize, Locarno 2023
Ilinca Manolache, Ovidiu Pîrșan, Nina Hoss, Dorina Lazăr, Katia Pascariu
Romania/Luxembourg/
France/Croatia
2023
Showcase
In Romanian with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Diana Caravia
Producer
Ada Solomon, Adrian Sitaru
Screenwriter
Radu Jude
Cinematography
Marius Panduru
Editor
Cătălin Cristuțiu
Production Design
Cristian Niculescu, Andreea Popa
Director
Radu Jude
Radu Jude is a Romanian director and screenwriter. In 2006, he made the short film The Tube with a Hat, winner of more than 50 international awards. Jude’s feature debut The Happiest Girl in the World (2009) was selected for more than 50 international film festivals. Titles such as Aferim!, Scarred Hearts and Everybody in Our Family followed and won multiple awards. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) won the Crystal Globe for Best Film and Label Europa Cinema Prize in Karlovy Vary in 2018 and Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2021.
Filmography: The Happiest Girl in the World (2006); Aferim! (2015); Scarred Hearts (2016); I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018); Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Blue Trail
77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
Streetwalker
Middle class and married, Elena (Miroslava Stern) has been seduced by an unscrupulous swindler, who turns out to be the pimp of Maria (Elda Peralta), a prostitute and Elena's estranged sister. But are they really so different under the skin?
Two Prosecutors
In the midst of Stalin’s purges, a naïve prosecutor sets out to investigate a prisoner’s innocence, unaware of the labyrinthine bureaucracy awaiting him. A Kafkaesque procedural thriller about the pursuit of justice in the face of corruption.
Image: © SBS Productions
Salón México
Cheated by her pimp, Mercedes recklessly steals his wallet and is only saved from a severe beating by the intervention of a kindly policeman. Hard-hitting social realism sits beside patriotic sentimentality and multiple red hot dance sequences.
The Kneeling Goddess
In which wealthy industrialist Arturo de Cordova purchases the titular nude sculpture of his lover (María Félix) as an anniversary gift for his innocent, adoring wife. Soon enough the wife is dead, though untangling just how and why is part of the fun.