Classic Cinemas

The Story

“[An] extraordinary opus… startling —a provocative, sarcastic, and momentous act of interrogation between the past and the present that escalates to an impasse, with the hands of each locked around the neck of the other.” — Variety

Radu Jude (Aferim!), one of contemporary Europe’s most expressive and bold creators, once again highlights the errors of past generations that are still perniciously plaguing society. In Barbarians, Jude takes up a massacre of Jews perpetrated by the Romanian Army on the Eastern Front in 1941, an actual event that a young activist artist decides to stage. This slowly unfolding film, focused on the reconstruction of the ghastly incident, ingeniously updates Hannah Arendt’s incisive work on the banality of evil.

Winner Best Film at the 2018 Karlovy Vary Film Festival, this startling and searing political satire carries a jarring contemporary resonance.