The prolific, versatile Radu Jude (Dracula and Kontinental ’25, both VIFF 2025) is back, and this time he’s taking on a classic. Octave Mirbeau’s novel has been adapted for the screen no less than three times, but never quite like this. Ana Dumitrașcu plays Gianina, the chambermaid of the title; employed by a putatively progressive French couple, she finds herself oppressed in her position. Jude’s twist on the material is typically self-reflexive: our heroine, prodded by her employers, winds up playing the starring role in a theatrical adaptation of… Diary of a Chambermaid.
What emerges is a complex but nevertheless caustic satire of bourgeois self-flattery, presented with wit and acuity by the Romanian auteur. More restrained than some of the recent works that put him on the map, Diary of a Chambermaid is still quintessential Jude. Holding up a mirror to middle-class complacency, he complements his critique with a meditation on performance and reality.
Supported by
Showcase Series Supported by
Community Partner
Radu Jude
Ana Dumitrașcu, Marie Rivière, Mélanie Thierry, Vincent Macaigne
France/Romania
2026
In French and Romanian with English subtitles
At Alliance Française & International Village
At Fifth Ave
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Saïd Ben Saïd
Screenwriter
Radu Jude
Cinematography
Marius Panduru
Editor
Cătălin Cristuțiu
Production Design
Stéphanie Delpech
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
The Haunting
Directed by Robert Wise in 1963, The Haunting is a classic exercise in the suggestive power of cinema, adapted from Shirley Jackson's 1959 best-seller, The Haunting of Hill House, a provocative blend of supernatural and psychological horror.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.
Get Out
Guess who's coming to dinner? Daniel Kaluuya is the Black boyfriend justifiably anxious about meeting his white girlfriend's folks for the first time in Jordan Peele's satiric modern horror classic, one of a series curated by our VIFF+ Premium members.