"Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari"

Currently consisting of around 25 short and feature-length films, the oeuvre of Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude (*1977) stands out for its enormous thematic and stylistic range. His films are fearless, playful, entertaining, political, formally daring, aware of history and very current. “ÎMI ESTE INDIFERENT DACĂ ÎN ISTORIE VOM INTRA CA BARBARI“ explores the realm of memory politics: a young, self-confident  theatre director (Ioana Iacob) is planning an open-air production with non-professional actors that is supposed to remember how the Romanian military massacred over 20,000 Jews in Odessa in October 1941 as well as Romania’s massive involvement in the Holocaust under Ion Antonescu, which continues not to be discussed in public to this day. In so doing, she experiences resistance on various levels. The extras, a cynical cultural functionary and the audience confront her with contemporary anti-Semitism, racism and sexism as well as censorship and historical falsification. Peppered with history photos and films as well as texts by Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Isaac Babel, to name just a few, the film counters idealization with clarification, asking at the same time the question of the effectiveness or failure of political art. (bik)