Tag Archives: Radu Jude

BURNING BRIGHT — NEW FRENCH FILMMAKERS 2022: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN

Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as a flight attendant going nowhere in Zero Fucks Given

CinéSalon: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN (RIEN À FOUTRE) (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre, 2021)
French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 4, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through October 25, 4:00 & 7:30
fiaf.org

Adèle Exarchopoulos is magnetic as a flight attendant with a loose grip on her life in Zero Fucks Given, the debut directorial collaboration between Paris- and Brussels-based cowriters and producers Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre. The film is screening October 4 at 4:00 and 7:30 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers 2022,” consisting of nine features and three shorts from up-and-coming and emerging French directors.

Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color, Mandibles) stars as Cassandre, a twentysomething woman who’s unable to commit to anything, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She considers herself a free spirit, but she doesn’t do much with that freedom. She is based at an airport in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and wants to get a better airline job in Dubai; she might travel the world, but she spends most of her time in airport hotels and nightclubs, swiping right and left on her cellphone for company. “I like people for two hours and then it’s goodbye,” she tells friends.

As a flight attendant for Wing, she downs vodka before takeoff, usually does the bare minimum at work, and regularly breaks the rules, which she thinks don’t apply to her; when she is offered a promotion, she asserts that she doesn’t want any more responsibilities. After partying, she often wakes up in a blackout about the night before. She might claim to not care, but she is clearly haunted by the death of her mother, who died in a horrific car crash. She has trouble communicating with her father, Jean (Alexandre Perrier), who was devastated by the loss and is trying to sue someone, anyone. When Cassandre — whose name references the Greek mythological figure who was cursed with the ability to prophesize doom that no one listens to — eventually has to return home, suppressed emotions bubble to the surface.

Zero Fucks Given has an infectious, freewheeling atmosphere; the cast includes nonprofessional actors and actual airline personnel, and Perrier, who plays Cassandre’s distraught dad, is one of the associate producers. Marre and Lecoustre (Castle to Castle) eschew rehearsals and encourage significant improvisation while shooting on location with extended breaks in between filming scenes. Exarchopoulos even does her own hair and makeup and wears her own clothing to give the film a more realistic feeling.

Cinematographer Olivier Boonjing zooms in on Cassandre’s face and body as she pretends not to care about what she’s doing, but there’s more to her than she’s allowing herself to acknowledge. “I’m rather lucky,” she says, but she’s going nowhere. She rarely has time to experience the ritzy cities she flies to, traveling back and forth in the enclosed space of airplanes, breathing recycled air. Her mother died in a roundabout, unable to get out of a traffic circle, a stark metaphor for how Cassandre is stuck in life. You might not give a fuck about Cassandre at the beginning, but by the end you’ll be giving more than a few.

“Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers 2022” continues on Tuesdays through October 25 with Audrey Diwan’s Happening, Martin Jauvat’s Grand Paris, and Lina Soualem’s Their Algeria.

FIRST LOOK 2022: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN

Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as a flight attendant going nowhere in Zero Fucks Given

FIRST LOOK 2022: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN (RIEN À FOUTRE) (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre, 2021)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, March 18, 7:00
Festival runs March 16-20; weekend pass $60; festival pass $120
718-777-6800
movingimage.us

Adèle Exarchopoulos is magnetic as a flight attendant with a loose grip on her life in Zero Fucks Given, the debut directorial collaboration between Paris- and Brussels-based cowriters and producers Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre. The film makes its New York premiere as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s eleventh “First Look” festival, consisting of more than three dozen international shorts and features in addition to a gallery presentation and a live virtual reality performance.

Zero Fucks Given is screening at MoMI on March 18 at 7:00. “First Look 2022” runs March 16-20, kicking off with Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s Croatia-set Murina, preceded by Tsai Ming-liang’s Hong Kong short The Night. The closing night selection is Pawel Lozinski’s documentary The Balcony Movie. Among the other films are Kirill Serebrennikov’s Petrov’s Flu, Sergei Loznitza Babi Yar. Context, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection, Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play, Edwin’s Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, Omar El Zohairy’s Feathers, and Radu Jude’s Semiotic Plastic. There will also be daily “Working on It” lab sessions with live presentations, panel discussions, and screenings, followed by receptions with festival guests

BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: A SKETCH FOR A POSSIBLE FILM

Emi (Katia Pascariu) goes on a strange journey in Rade Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: A SKETCH FOR A POSSIBLE FILM (BABARDEALA CU BUCLUC SAU PORNO BALAMUC) (Radu Jude, 2021)
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144/165 West Sixty-Fifth St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, November 19
www.filmlinc.org
filmforum.org

Radu Jude’s brilliantly absurdist Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn lives up to its title, a wildly satiric takedown of social mores that redefines what is obscene. Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2021 Berlinale, the multipart tale begins with an extremely graphic prologue, a XXX-rated homemade porn video with a woman and an unseen man holding nothing back. In the first main section, the woman, a successful teacher named Emi (Katia Pascariu), is distressed to learn that the video is threatening to go viral. She determinedly walks through the streets of Bucharest, buying flowers (which she holds upside down), discussing her dilemma with her boss, the headmistress (Claudia Ieremia), and calling her husband, Eugen, trying to get the video deleted before her meeting with angry parents at the prestigious private school where she teaches young children.

Jude and cinematographer Marius Panduru follow the masked Emi — the film was shot during the pandemic, so masks are everywhere — on her journey, the camera often lingering on the scene well after Emi has left the frame, focusing on advertising billboards, couples in the middle of conversations, people waiting for a bus, and other random actions, before finding Emi again. She sometimes fades into the background, barely seen through the windows of a passing vehicle or amid a crowd crossing at a light. She gets into an argument with a man who has parked on the sidewalk, blocking her way; she insists that he move the car, but he unleashes a stream of misogynistic curses. Swear words are prevalent throughout the film, mostly adding poignant humor.

The second segment consists of a montage of archival and new footage that details some of Romania’s recent history, involving the military, the government, religion, fascism, Nazi collaboration, patriotism, the two world wars, the 1989 revolution, Nicolae Ceaușescu, domestic violence, jokes about blondes, and the value of cinema itself. The bevy of images also points out which NSFW word is most commonly looked up in the dictionary, as well as which is second. (The film is splendidly edited by Cătălin Cristuțiu, with a fab soundtrack by Jura Ferina and Pavao Miholjević.)

It all comes together in the third section, in the school garden, where Emi faces a few dozen masked, socially distanced, very angry parents and grandparents who want her fired immediately, while the headmistress demands a calm discussion. The masked Emi is a stand-in for all of us, facing the wrath of the unruly mob forcing its sanctimonious platitudes on others when it really needs to look at itself. It’s a riotously funny sitcomlike debate in which Jude roasts many common, hypocritical beliefs held by Romanians (and people all over the world) that have not necessarily changed much from the news clips shown in the previous part.

The cartoonish cast, which includes Olimpia Mălai as Mrs. Lucia, Nicodim Ungureanu as Lt. Gheorghescu, Alexandru Potocean as Marius Buzdrugovici, and Andi Vasluianu as Mr. Otopeanu, really gets to strut its stuff while making sure their masks are properly covering their mouths and noses. They argue about beloved national poet Mihai Eminescu and Russian writer Isaac Babel, delve into various sexual positions, repeat Woody the Woodpecker’s trademark call, and quote long, intellectual passages from the internet as Jude (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Aferim!) reveals where society’s true obscenities lie. It’s an irreverent tour de force that offers three distinct endings to put a capper on the strangely alluring affair, turning a scary mirror on the sorry state of twenty-first-century existence.

Playfully subtitled A Sketch for a Possible Film in a reference to André Malraux’s description of Eugène Delacroix’s belief that his sketches could be of the same quality as his paintings, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Romania’s official Oscars submission, opens November 19 at Lincoln Center and Film Forum.

NYFF59 MAIN SLATE: BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN

Emi (Katia Pascariu) goes on a strange journey in Rade Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN: A SKETCH FOR A POSSIBLE FILM (BABARDEALA CU BUCLUC SAU PORNO BALAMUC) (Radu Jude, 2021)
New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center
Saturday, September 25, Alice Tully Hall, with virtual Q&A, 9:00
Sunday, September 26, Francesca Beale Theater, 8:00
www.filmlinc.org

Playfully subtitled A Sketch for a Possible Film in a reference to André Malraux’s description of Eugène Delacroix’s belief that his sketches could be of the same quality as his paintings, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is making its US premiere September 25 and 26 at the New York Film Festival; the first screening will be followed by a virtual Q&A. The film opens in theaters November 19.

NYFF59: THE FIFTY-NINTH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand star in Joel Coen’s NYFF59 opener, The Tragedy of Macbeth

FIFTY-NINTH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater, Howard Gilman Theater, Francesca Beale Theater, Alice Tully Hall, Damrosch Park, and other venues
September 24 – October 10, $17-$25
www.filmlinc.org/nyff2021

For its fifty-ninth year, the New York Film Festival, running September 24 through October 10, returns in person, primarily at five venues at Lincoln Center but also with a handful of satellite screenings at Anthology Film Archives downtown, BAM Cinemas in Fort Greene, the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, and the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.

The opening-night selection is the hotly anticipated The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Coen’s Shakespeare adaptation starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the ambitious couple seeking power at all costs. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, a neo-Western based on a cult novel by Thomas Savage and with Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Benedict Cumberbatch, is the centerpiece choice. The closing-night selection is festival favorite Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, in which two women, played by Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit, meet in a maternity ward in a story about pain and trauma.

The main slate features a wide range of works from international directors; among the highlights are Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, which takes place on Fårö, where Ingmar Bergman lived and worked; Gaspar Noé’s tender Vortex; Futura, an Italian omnibus by Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, and Alice Rohrwacher; Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, about a real-life seventeenth-century nun; Radu Jude’s Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn; Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, inspired by a Haruki Murakami short story; Rebecca Hall’s Passing, an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel; Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman, in which an eight-year-old girl deals with loss; Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s sci-fi punk musical Neptune Frost; and Hit the Road, the debut of Panah Panahi, son of fest fave Jafar Pahanhi.

Fans of Lou Reed can check out Todd Haynes’s new documentary, The Velvet Underground, about the revolutionary band, as well as Songs for Drella, Ed Lachman’s 1990 concert film of Reed and John Cale’s song cycle for Andy Warhol. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is back at the festival with Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton as an ex-pat botanist, and the short film Night Colonies, part of Currents Program 7: New Sensations. And unstoppable South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo has a pair of Main Slate films, In Front of Your Face and Introduction.

Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is part of NYFF59 Revivals

Among the other works in the Currents section, focusing on socially relevant fiction and nonfiction films, are Wang Qiong’s All About My Sisters, Denis Côté’s Social Hygiene, Shengze Zhu’s A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces, and Claire Simon’s I Want to Talk About Duras. Revivals include Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher, Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Miklós Jancsó’s The Round-Up, Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s Sundance winner Chameleon Street, Jack Hazan and David Mingay’s Rude Boy starring the Clash, and Christine Choy’s Who Killed Vincent Chin?

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune leads the Spotlight section, along with Marco Bellocchio’s Marx Can Wait, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, and Mike Mills’s C’mon C’mon, with Joaquin Phoenix. And finally, NYFF59 pays tribute to the centenary of cofounder Amos Vogel’s birth with a seven-program Spotlight sidebar consisting of cutting-edge, avant-garde, experimental shorts and features Vogel brought to Cinema 16 from 1947 to 1963 and the New York Film Festival between 1963 and 1968.

THE ROMANIANS: 30 YEARS OF CINEMA REVOLUTION

Anamaria Marinca stars in Cristian Mungiu’s harrowing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,, part of Film Forum celebration of the last three decades of Romanian cinema

Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through November 26
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

On December 25, 1989, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, were executed by a firing squad after being found guilty of corruption and genocide. In the wake of his death, the Romanian film industry reinvented itself, and Film Forum pays tribute to that change with “The Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution,” consisting of thirty films screening over twelve days through November 26. Several shows will be followed by Q&As with the director and/or actor. In addition to the below four recommendations, the series includes Nae Caranfil’s Do Not Lean Out the Window, Radu Mihaileanu’s Train of Life, Alexandru Solomon’s The Great Communist Bank Robbery, and Constantin Popescu’s Pororoca.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
Friday, November 22, 3:30, 7:45
filmforum.org

Winner of the Palme D’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a harrowing look at personal freedom at the end of the Ceaușescu regime in late-’80s Romania. Anamaria Marinca gives a powerful performance as Otilia, a young woman risking her own safety to help her best friend, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), out of a difficult, dangerous situation. Their lives get even more complicated when they turn to Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) to take care of things. Cinematographer Oleg Mutu, who shot Cristi Puiu’s brilliant The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, keeps the camera relatively steady for long scenes, without cuts, pans, dollies, or zooms, as the actors walk in and out of view, giving the film a heightened level of believability without looking like a documentary. Set in a restrictive era with a burgeoning black market, 4 Months goes from mystery to psychological drama to thriller with remarkable ease — and the less you know about the plot, the better.

Father (Teodor Corban) and son (Mihai Comānoiu) hunt for a runaway slave in wickedly funny Aferim!

AFERIM! (Radu Jude, 2015)
Saturday, November 23, 3:30
bigworldpictures.org
filmforum.org

Romanian director Radu Jude won the Silver Bear as Best Director at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival for Aferim!, his savagely funny blacker-than-black comic Western about bigotry, infidelity, and frontier justice in 1835 Wallachia. Lawkeeper Costandin (Teodor Corban) and his son, Ionitā (Mihai Comānoiu), are galloping through the local countryside, searching for runaway Gypsy slave Carfin (Cuzin Toma), who Boyar Iordache Cindescu (Alexandru Dabija) has accused of having an affair with his wife, Sultana (Mihaela Sîrbu). The surly Costandin leads the hunt, verbally cutting down everyone he meets, from random old women to abbots to fellow lawmen, with wicked barbs, calling them filthy whores, crows, and other foul names while spouting ridiculous theories about honor and religion; he even batters his son, saying he’s “a waste of bread” and that “if you slap him, he’ll die of grief.” It’s a cruel, cholera-filled time in which even the monks beat the poor, where Costandin regales a priest with the telling riddle, “Lifeless out of life, life out of lifeless,” which the priest thinks refers to the coming doomsday.

Cowritten by Jude (The Happiest Girl in the World, Everybody in Our Family) and novelist Florin Lăzărescu (Our Special Envoy, Numbness), who previously collaborated on the short film The Tube with a Hat, and shot in gloriously stark black-and-white by Marius Panduru (12:08 East of Bucharest; Police, Adjective), the Romanian / Bulgarian / Czech coproduction is an absurdist combination of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, and John Ford’s The Searchers, skewering everything in its path, either overtly or under its wide-reaching breath. Even Dana Pāpāruz’s costumes are a genuine riot, especially the boyar’s majestically ridiculous hat. But Aferim! is more than just a clever parody of period films and nineteenth-century Eastern European culture and social mores; it is also a brilliant exploration of the nature of racism, discrimination, misogyny, and the aristocracy that directly relates to what’s going on around the world today as well as how Romania has dealt with its own sorry past of enslaving the Romani people. Jude was inspired by real events and historical documents, setting the film immediately after the 1834 Russian occupation, which adds to its razor-sharp observations. “Aferim! is an attempt to gaze into the past, to take a journey inside the mentalities of the beginning of the nineteenth century — all epistemological imperfections inherent to such an enterprise included,” Jude says in his director’s statement. “It is obvious that such an effort would be pointless should we not believe that this hazy past holds the explanation for certain present issues.” Don’t miss this absolute gem of a film, which was Romania’s submission for the Academy Awards.

Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) must choose between her faith and her best friend in Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills

BEYOND THE HILLS (DUPA DEALURI) (Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
Sunday, November 24, 7:30
Monday, November 25, 12:40
filmforum.org

Inspired by a true story detailed in a pair of nonfiction novels by Romanian journalist Tatiana Niculescu Bran, Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills is a powerful, emotional study of love, friendship, dedication, devotion, and sexual repression. In a barren section of modern-day Romania, Alina (Cristina Flutur) arrives at a poverty-stricken Orthodox monastery, where her childhood friend Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) has become a nun. Both young women grew up in a poor orphanage, and both still have no real place in society. Alina has come to try to convince Voichita — possibly her former lover — to leave the flock and go with her to Germany, where they can live and work together freely. Early on, Voichita rubs a tired Alina’s bare back; when Alina turns over, Voichita just stops short of massaging her friend’s chest, the sexual tension nearly exploding in a scene of quiet beauty that speaks volumes about their relationship. Despite Alina’s pleading, Voichita, apparently filled with deep inner guilt, refuses to turn her back on the priest (Valeriu Andriuţă), whom all the nuns refer to as Pa, and her newfound vocation. Unable to accept her friend’s decision, Alina begins acting out in threatening ways to both herself and the true believers, leading to shocking, tragic consequences.

Mungiu’s feature-film follow-up to the 2007 Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is another harrowing examination of characters trapped in a devastating situation. The two-and-a-half-hour film seems to take place in a different era, far away from contemporary towns and cities, cell phones and even electricity. Mungiu, who won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes for the film, is careful not to condemn or belittle Pa, Ma (Dana Tapalagă), and their faith, but he doesn’t praise them either, leaving it up to viewers to decide for themselves. In their feature-film debuts, Flutur and Stratan, who are both from Mungiu’s hometown of Iasi and shared the Best Actress award at Cannes, are exceptional, their eyes filled with fear and longing as Alina and Voichita try to find a balance in their opposing worlds.

Luminița Gheorghiu plays a controlling, domineering mother in Călin Peter Netzer’s award-winning Child’s Pose

CHILD’S POSE (POZITIA COPILULUI) (Călin Peter Netzer, 2013)
Monday, November 25, 8:40
filmforum.org
www.zeitgeistfilms.com

Luminita Gheorghiu, grand dame of the Romanian New Wave, was nominated for Best Actress at the European Film Awards for her devastating portrayal of a domineering mother in Călin Peter Netzer’s Child’s Pose. Gheorghiu (The Death of Mister Lazarescu; 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) stars as Cornelia Kerenes, an elegant, cigarette-smoking architect who immediately jumps into action when her son, Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache), is involved in a terrible car accident, killing a child. Despite their recent estrangement — Cornelia and Barbu have rarely spoken since he married Carmen (Ilinca Goia) — Cornelia starts constructing a scenario, like designing one of her buildings, to keep Barbu out of jail. She and her surgeon husband, Reli (Florin Zamfirescu), along with her sister, Olga (Nataşa Raab), start calling in favors and doling out bribes while showing a stunning lack of concern for the family of the boy who Barbu killed. As the child’s funeral approaches, relationships come together and fall apart as parents try to deal with what has happened to their children. Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, Child’s Pose is a searing examination of class, corruption, and power.

Reminiscent of Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman, in which María Onetto gives a mesmerizing performance as an Argentine upper-class wife and mother who looks the other way when it appears that she might have run over a local boy, Child’s Pose is a penetrating character study that centers around the wide gap between the rich and the poor. Early on in the film, Cornelia, who her husband at one point calls “Controlia,” sits down with her dour cleaning woman and offers her a pair of used shoes, expecting her to rejoice in such wonderful charity. The scene sets the stage for what occurs later, as Cornelia believes money is the primary route to Barbu’s freedom, but it’s a path littered with more than just one young child’s body. The taut, razor-sharp script was written by Netzer (Maria, Medal of Honor) and Răzvan Rădulescu, who has worked on such other Romanian New Wave films as The Death of Mister Lazarescu, Stuff and Dough, and Tuesday, After Christmas. In Cornelia, they have created a woman worthy of joining the pantheon of classic domineering cinematic mothers.

“I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS”

How the 1941 Odessa massacre has been remembered is the central focus of Radu Jude’s “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians”

“I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS” (ÎMI ESTE INDIFERENT DACĂ ÎN ISTORIE VOM INTRA CA BARBARI) (Radu Jude, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, July 19
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
bigworldpictures.org

Romanian writer-director Radu Jude follows up his 2017 documentary, The Dead Nation, with “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” a bold, provocative fiction film with nonfiction elements that explores continuing anti-Semitism and bigotry in Romania, Eastern Europe, and the world. The title is taken from a statement made by Romanian military dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu to the Council of Ministers in the summer of 1941, just a few months before the Odessa massacre in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed by Romanian troops. The film is set in contemporary times, as theater director Mariana Marin (Ioana Iacob) is preparing for a live, one-time-only massacre reenactment in the town square. Marin is determined to show what really happened during those days, complete with brutal murders and hangings, but Constantin Movilă (theater director Alexandru Dabija), her connection with the local government, insists that she leave out the gruesome parts, that the show should be a celebration of Romanian heroes. She argues that it would not be fair to the nearly four hundred thousand Jews that were ethnically cleansed by the Romanian military, but he quibbles over what’s true and what the community wants to see. As the show approaches, Movilă threatens to cancel it while numerous actors complain about the negative aspects being depicted, displaying affection for “Uncle Hitler” and a lack of empathy for the exterminated Jews.

“I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” is like a post-Nouvelle Vague film, echoing elements of French cinema from Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette to Olivier Assayas and Arnaud Desplechin, with debates of texts by Isaac Babel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Joseph Goebbels, Nicolae Steinhardt, and others. But instead of becoming pedantic, the discussions serve to enlighten the arguments and define such characters as Movilă and, in particular, Marin, who not accidentally shares the same name with a Romanian poet who wrote, “Serene and bitter, I hurry across my native land / As if tomorrow had already been.” The entire film is seen from Marin’s determined point of view, whether she’s reading in bed with her lover, Ștefan (Șerban Pavlu), getting support from her lead actor, Traian (Alex Bogdan), and right-hand assistant, Oltea (Ilinca Manolache), or smoking and drinking in a bubbles-free bath. She’s mad at the state of the world and disgusted that people don’t want to know the truth of their history; she’s like the tank she insists she must have for the production — and like the tank, which has to stand still, Marin refuses to budge, understanding the difference between compromise and censorship.

In her first leading role, Iacob is mesmerizing throughout the film’s 140 minutes, giving a tour-de-force performance that lays it all out there as she portrays a bold and brash woman who won’t back down from her personal and professional desires; she’s so immersed in the part that at times you’ll think you’re watching a documentary, enhanced by cinematographer Marius Panduru’s wandering, unpredictable camera. Jude (Scarred Hearts, Aferim!) tackles such critical issues as governmental whitewashing of history, the public’s selective memory, and the definition of patriotism itself, a debate raging across America under the current administration as well as in other nations. Whether Marin gets to stage the show or not ends up being besides the point as the people around her reveal their biases and hatreds, something a play is not about to change. “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” is a necessary film, but it’s also a frightening one.