Radu Jude is the recipient of the ‘Luna de València’ award at the 40th edition of Cinema Jove. This is a recognition of the career of one of the most original filmmakers on the European cinematic scene, the Romanian director Radu Jude.
The filmmaker, who was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2021 and the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay this year, will visit Valencia.
Radu Jude was born in Bucharest in 1977. In 2003, he graduated in Directing from the University of Media in Bucharest, and three years later he premiered his first short film The Lamp with a Cap (2006), which won awards at Sundance and Cinema Jove. His feature film debut, The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), was selected for both the Berlinale and the Toronto Film Festival.
Since then, major festivals around the world have repeatedly recognized his talent, including the Grand Prize at Karlovy Vary for I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018), the Golden Bear in Berlin for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), and both the Special Jury Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize in Locarno for Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023). This same year, he was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale for his socio-political satire Kontinental ’25, shot in just 10 days with a mobile phone. He is currently working on the post-production of his own adaptation of the Dracula myth.
“Radu Jude perfectly embodies the spirit Cinema Jove has always aimed for: a young filmmaker whose innovative and unprejudiced gaze shakes the viewer,” explains the director of Cinema Jove, Carlos Madrid.
For Madrid, the Romanian filmmaker “looks at the human being with irony and criticism, but also with tenderness. Sometimes, he even pities them.” That’s why he describes him as “a radical filmmaker in the etymological sense: his cinema goes to the root of some of the most sensitive debates in contemporary society.”
Radu Jude will visit Valencia to receive the Luna de València award, which acknowledges his contribution to contemporary cinema, and to accompany the retrospective dedicated to his work. Short films such as The Lamp with a Cap (2006), Caricaturana (2021), and features like Aferim! (2015), I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018), Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) will be screened at the Filmoteca during the festival.
“The way Jude approaches certain themes—many of them rooted in contemporary reality—and tackles them with an incisive, ironic, and unfiltered perspective makes him an original and essential voice in contemporary European cinema,” concludes Madrid.
