Radu Jude: "There can be more cinema in a TikTok image than in a superhero movie."

Not long ago, Romanian director Radu Jude (Bucharest, 1977) was asked how he imagined a world without all the misery portrayed in much of his films in general and in what was then his latest work (it doesn't matter which one) in particular. His response was a quote from Jean Genet: "Don't ask me what world I'd like to live in. I don't want to live in a different world, I just want to be against it." And, indeed, if anything accurately defines the work of the director of films as close to electroshock as Une sêtre unfortunet (2021), winner of the Golden Bear, it is his firm commitment to not leaving anyone indifferent; nor anyone with their head on straight. This was the case in each of his previous works, from his feature film debut, The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), to what is considered his latest work, Kontinental '25 , which won the Best Screenplay Award at the last Berlinale and was shot in 10 days on a mobile phone. It is only fair, therefore, that he be singled out as the recipient of the Luna de Valencia Honorary Award at the 40th edition of Cinema Jove. Not for nothing, his first short , The Lamp Cover (2006), was duly awarded here, at the festival that now pays tribute to him.

At the last Berlin Film Festival, where he presented his penultimate film (a completed reworking of the Dracula myth is still pending release), he spoke about what his work speaks to, and about the very meaning of everything, which, ultimately, is what he has never stopped speaking about. Kontinental '25 tells, in several scenes or prints, the story of a kind, loving civil servant, a devoted mother to her children, and with an impeccable reputation who one day feels guilty. And with good reason. During the eviction of a man from his apartment in whose building the owners plan to build a hotel, tragedy strikes. The individual, whom some would call a squatter (with a k for ketchup), commits suicide. And therein lies the drama; the drama of a Romania that has stopped believing in anything; the drama of a Europe that has stopped believing in itself, and even the drama of an entire humanity that has stopped believing in something as basic as humanity. But, as the director himself says, it's not enough to feel guilty. "When you feel guilty, the guilt disappears and things move on," the director affirms.

"Right now, I could say that the closest thing Europe looks is a failure, but, despite everything, it's our only hope. Between a madman like Putin, a madman like Trump, and a madman like Orban, we have no choice but to trust and believe in our own destiny, a destiny that we all have to create together," he comments, and, using his own country as an example, he continues: "In the city where I grew up, there were common spaces and parks. As soon as the brutal communist dictatorship fell, almost as a reaction, people stopped believing in public life. And public transport and public spaces collapsed... Communism not only put an end to everything in the strictest sense, but it even put an end to the possibility of an alternative to the corruption disaster that capitalism is right now... You could say that you look at the ugly buildings that now replace the old ones and you can say that every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism." And, indeed, that's what the acid-corrosive miracle that is Kontinental '75 is about.

The director had previously distinguished himself for his precise portrayal of things that admit no other depiction than despair and emptiness. Films like I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) emerged as a prodigious meta-cinematic construction that laid bare every corner of a History (with a capital H) in the process of crumbling. Long before that, Aferim! (2015) won the Best Director award, also in Berlin, with a quintessentially devastating account of the past. In Uppercase Print (2020), the ability to sprinkle vitriol into every frame came from the story of a teenager determined to write out all his rage against the Ceausescu regime in chalk. And so on, up to Un fois étude ou porno loco , which, for now, may pass for his not-quite-definitive, but almost, work. Picasso said, and Jude himself quotes, that a caricature is not realistic, but it is truthful. So that's it.

In this film, the one that won the Golden Bear, the director composes, in the form of a triptych, the consequences, so to speak, of a home sex video of a high school teacher that suddenly went viral. The scene in question (a fellatio) is seen raw before the credits and is presented as a paradigm of the obscene. But beware, the truly lewd, but not so graphic, part comes later, when the debate begins at school, on the street, at home, on the Internet... "In truth, and as much as the scene in question caused a stir, the film has nothing to do with pornography. It has to do with freedom and rights, with the private and the public, what is social and what is individual. In fact, for quite some time I considered whether or not to include the explicit image and I came to the conclusion that omitting it would already condition the film in a sense. You can't start a debate about something you can't see," he reflects. And, indeed, it is seen.

Radu Jude has continued his investigations, which are also provocations, without pausing for a second. Each one more lucid than the last. The satire on our malaise, which is also a parody of the work culture that subjugates us, Don't Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023), was followed by the disconcerting and highly fascinating installation Sleep #2, composed of webcam shots of Andy Warhol's grave (2014). And immediately after, the miracle Eight Postcards from Utopia (2024), a film composed exclusively of images from television advertisements from the Nicolae Ceauescu regime. "It is said that cinema is the art of the present, indeed. But what is the present? An archive image used to create something new is not just a relic, it is also current, it is also present. In reality, and as Walter Benjamin maintained, the present and the past can be seen as two mirrors reflecting each other," says Jude to explain himself and to explain to us the moment of his cinema and, more generally, of cinema, of all of him.

At what point would you say cinema is?

Cinema has always been considered an ocean where different rivers meet: the river of photography, the river of literature, the river of music... But, in truth, cinema is in crisis because, to a large extent, it has stopped representing life. Yes, there is spectacle cinema, superhero cinema, but that's something else. Now I think there's more cinema in a TikTok video than in many films made, and certainly not in superhero films. It's cinema because it explains the world... There's staging, there's rhythm... It's even better than Godard.

"I just want to be against the grain" is the phrase, and Radu Jude is, without a doubt, the best award Cinema Jove can give right now.