military reenactment – Hannah Arendt – show – 1941, “the year that keeps returning”, as seen from 2018 – quotations – firearms – archive footage – the Odessa massacre – 16 mm and video – the Military Museum – negationism – videomapping – burlesque – dialogues – fanfare – Isaac Babel – fragmented narrative – Wenn die Soldaten durch die Stadt marschieren – trivialization by comparison – script by Marshal Antonescu – fire – directed by Radu Jude – featuring Ioana Iacob, Alexandru Dabija, Alex Bogdan – barracks jokes – ordinary people - nunca mas! – the present past, the past present.

Thinking about our dark history makes one look back with the horrified gaze of Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, whose “face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Born in 1977, Radu Jude directed the short films THE TUBE WITH A HAT (2006) which won more than 50 international prizes and ALEXANDRA (2007) and more than 150 advertising commercials.
His debut feature film, THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD (2009), winner of NHK/Filmmaker Award in Sundance and Hubert Bals grant, was selected in more than 50 film festivals among which Toronto, New Directors/New Films - NY, Thessaloniki, Sarajevo and London.
In 2011, he directed and produced the independent medium length FILM FOR FRIENDS.
EVERYBODY IN OUR FAMILY (2012), his second feature film which premiered in the Berlinale Forum, was selected in more than 30 film festivals around the world and released in cinemas in France, Holland and Hungary.
His two recent short films SHADOW OF A CLOUD (2013) and IT CAN PASS THROUGH THE WALL (2014) were selected in the Cannes - Directors' Fortnight section.
Radu’s third feature, AFERIM! (2015) had its world premiere at the 65th Berlinale Competition where it was awarded with the Silver Bear for Best Director.
In 2016 Radu made his debut as theatre director at the National Theatre of Timișoara adapting for the stage Ingmar Bergman`s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. In November, he premiered in Bucharest ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL, a theatre adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s script.
THE DEAD NATION represents his debut in documentary film and it premiered internationally at the Locarno IFF.

Filmography:
2018 - “I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS” (2018)
2017 - THE DEAD NATION
2016 - SCARRED HEARTS
2015 - AFERIM!
2014 - IT CAN PASS THROUGH THE WALL
2013 - SHADOW OF A CLOUD
2012 - EVERYBODY IN OUR FAMILY
2011 - FILM FOR FRIENDS
2009 - THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD