A satire of the global pandemic that we still live in. This film begins with a sex tape that goes awry. At stake is the life and career of Emi, a teacher who is forced by her students’ parents to resign. However, Emi refuses. Recommended for those who enjoy transgressive cinematic experiences – in the best sense.
It’s 2020, the world has stopped making sense. Not for Radu Jude (Aferim!, Uppercase Print), the new Romanian cinema mastermind and a regular at IndieLisboa, who makes good use of chaos in Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. First, he offers us a dictionary, a literary device to describe reality. Poetry. Porno. Power. Children. Church. Cunt. Then, or maybe before, he gives us a context. A Western city, a supermarket, some banknotes, a funeral, people wearing masks and rigorously sanitising their hands. Caught in between, there is a woman, a teacher. Her home sex tape leaked, she now faces a judgment by her students’ parents. Emi’s moral is scrutinised in such a way that Jude’s film is, in its turn, being labeled as pornography in some countries. The work of cinema, argues Jude, is to mirror the horrors of life so that we can see them and not be paralysed. In the most desperate times, you can still laugh. Or, alternatively, make a sex tape. (Anastasia Lukovnikova)
Radu Jude is a Romanian director and screenwriter. He studied filmmaking in Bucharest and started his career as an assistant director. In 2006, he made the short film The Tube with a Hat, winner of multiple awards. Jude’s feature debut The Happiest Girl in the World (2009) was selected for several international film festivals. Titles such as Aferim!, Scarred Hearts and Everybody in Our Family followed and won awards such as the Silver Bear for Best Director in 2015, among others. The international premiere of The Dead Nation in Locarno 2017 marked his debut in documentary film. His latest films, Uppercase Print and The Exit of the Trains (co-directed with Adrian Cioflâncă) premiered in Berlinale Forum 2020.
