Radu Jude by Silviu Ghetie
18th LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – 18 FICLPGC (APRIL 6 TO 15)
The Film Festival shall have filmmaker Radu Jude from April 6 to 15, since he has also been invited to be a member of the International Jury
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Thursday, March 15, 2018.- Radu Jude, a filmmaker that has been present in the Festival’s program over the past years, will be the protagonist of the eighteenth edition of the Gran-canarian festival. The Romanian director will visit the city to present a selection of his works (four features and one short film) and other four films chosen by him. His stay will be prolonged from April 6 to 15, since he has been invited to be a member of the Official Jury of the Film Festival.
After the turn of the millennium, and especially after Cristi Puiu won with her film The Death of Mr. Lazarezcu the Un Certain Award in 2005 at Cannes, Romanian cinema strikingly broke into the international panorama, even though they already had an important production and tradition in the twentieth century. The Gran-canarian Festival has been showing for over a decade now several of these great directors that belong to this new wave of filmmakers that register human experience from a tumultuous period. Their cinema and, in plenty of cases, the presence of directors such as Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Radu Muntean, Corneliu Porumbo, as well as the films by Radu Jude, have been a significant way of luring attraction for the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival.
In 2018, the Film Festival focuses its attention on this filmmaker, who is considered, according to the British Film Institute, one of the ten key directors in Romanian cinema. Thus, it will show four of his features and one short film, chosen by himself, as well as other four titles that are, in his opinion, necessary to approach his own filmography.
The film series, sponsored by Hospitales San Roque, includes his features Țara MoartĂ (The Dead Nation), 2017; Inimi cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts), 2016; Aferim!, 2015; Toata lumea din familia noastra (Everybody in Our Family), 2012; and the short film Lampa cu caciula (The Tube with a Hat), 2006. In addition, the Romanian filmmaker has proposed the viewing of Pays Barbare (Barbaric Land) by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Riccci Lucchi (France, 2013); O varĂ de neuitat (An Unforgettable Summer) (Romania, France, 1994) by his countryman Lucian Pintilie; Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live), by Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1962) and the Japanese Otona no miru ehon – Umarete wa mita keredo (I Was Born, But…) by Yasujirõ Ozu, 1932.
After doing a search with his name at IMDB, one finds out the 50 awards and 28 nominations that Radu Jude has obtained during his fifteen-year career. He is without a doubt one of the inevitable voices of Romanian cinema.
He took his first steps into the film industry in 2002 as an assistant director of Costa-Gavras in Amen. In 2003 he graduated in Film Directing at Media University of Bucharest. After a long history of producing and making short films and commercials, he worked in 2005 with Cristi Puiu as an assistant director in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Later, in 2006, he presented Lampa cu caciula, a short film that surpassed, in regard to its presence in important festivals and the awards it won, to any other precedent in Romanian cinema. Lampa cu caciula took Jude to Sundance, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Grimstad, Hamburg, Bilbao, Huesca, Trieste, Montpellier, Cottbus, Aspen, Lisbon, Brussels, Cracow, Almería, Valencia, etc, where it won the best possible awards.
With his first feature Cea mai fericitã fatã din lume (The happiest girl in the world), 2009, he once again participated in important festivals such as Cannes or IndieLisboa. Furthermore, he visited the Berlinale, which granted him the CICAE Award that year and the Silver Bear for Best Director six years later for his period drama Aferim!.
With Toata lumea din familia noastra (Everybody in Our Family), 2012, and its Best Film Award he conquered Sarajevo and won other international prizes and awards; and with Inimi cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts), another title included in the film series, he won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno.
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