The Dead Nation(RJ Retro)

With this found-footage film, Radu Jude fills in the historical backdrop on which Scarred Hearts unfolded – that is, the parochial mindset and spiralling xenophobia which eventually led to the massacre of over 400,000 Jews on Romanian soil during the second world war. What we see: glass-plate photographs of seemingly banal lives in a small Romanian town in the 1930s and 40s. What we hear: excerpts of a diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, in which he spells out the increasingly perilous situation he lives in as fascist leaders tease the evil out of the masses. What we get: a documentary which reveals a chapter in Romanian history that has remained obscured and buried, a j’accuse against a collective amnesia which allows murderous, extremist spectres to rise again in contemporary Romania and beyond. Never has montage been bestowed with such harrowing power.

Screened with: Shadow of a Cloud
Language: Romanian(English Subtitles)
Category: IIA
Duration: 29 Mins
Director: Radu Jude
Cast: Alexandru Dabija, Mihaela Sîrbu, Şerban Pavlu, Olga Taisu Podaru
Story: Florin is summoned to give the last rites to a dying woman, only for the family to change their minds at the last minute and challenge his ability and his beliefs instead. A story of a priest enduring the wrath of his vengeful flock, and a withering attack on the pettiness of the modern-day masses.