Directed by Radu Jude • 2023 • Romania

The Potemkinists crams everything we love about Radu Jude into 18 minutes: playful deconstruction of national myth, deep knowledge of film history, and plenty of satirical obscenity. In 2021, a sculptor (Alexandru Dabija) brings a cultural bureaucrat (Cristina Drăghici) to a communist-era monument on the Danube-Black Sea Canal to propose a new artwork: one commemorating the little-known fact that the mutinous Russian sailors of the Battleship Potemkin, immortalised in Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film classic, were ultimately granted asylum in the Romanian port of Constanţa. As the pair argue the toss, Jude cuts to the heart of a range of thorny issues – idealism, dictatorship, artmaking – with his customary absurdist wit.

THE POTEMKINISTS • POTEMKINIŞTII
Written and directed by Radu Jude
Cinematography by Marius Panduru
Edited by Cătălin Cristuțiu
Starring: Alexandru Dabija, Cristina Drăghici

In Romanian with English subtitles