'Touch Me Not' | From Bucharest to London, via Berlin and Karlovy Vary: Romanian Premieres at BFI London Film Festival 2018

13 - 17/10/2018 @ Various London cinemas

For over a decade, Romanian cinema has been a force on the international film scene. This year’s edition of the BFI London Film Festival, Britain’s grandest cinematic showcase, brings to the fore two recent Romanian productions that blew away critics and film lovers alike: Adina Pintilie’s ‘Touch Me Not’ and Radu Jude’s ‘I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians’.

“Touch Me Not” („Nu m? atinge-m?”)

Romanian director Adina Pintilie’s Berlin Golden Bear winner is a bold, quietly provocative drama about one woman struggling with her fear of intimacy.

Laura (Laura Benson), an Englishwoman in her early 50s living in an anonymous German city, decides to explore her aversion to physical contact and sex by staging a series of encounters. Among the people sharing stories and acts of intimacy are a male hustler, a trans sex worker and a young man with a severe physical disability; while from behind the camera the figure of the director (Pintilie herself) reflects on the drama, lending the film the confessional intimacy of a therapy session. Touch Me Not explores with intelligence and sensitivity sexuality at its most expansive, diverse views of physical beauty and sensuality, and the ambiguous terrain between fiction and documentary. Edward Lawrenson, BFI

Adina Pintilie has directed seven short films and two medium films. Productions such as ‘Nu te sup?ra, dar…’ (2007) and ‘Oxigen/ Oxygen’ (2010) have been presented in over 50 international festivals, while the ‘Balastiera#186’ (2007) short, co-directed with George Chiper, has been shortlisted at Locarno film festival in 2008 and has won the silver at the Miami International Film Festival and a special mention at Trieste Festival in 2009.

Written and Directed by: Adina Pintilie

Produced by: Bianca Oana, Philippe Avril, Adina Pintilie

With: Laura Benson, Tómas Lemarquis, Christian Bayerlein

Romania-Germany-Czech Republic-Bulgaria-France

2018, 125min. Subtitles in English

“I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians” („Îmi este indiferent dac? în istorie vom intra ca barbari”)

Radu Jude, the celebrated director of 'Aferim!', 'Scarred Hearts' and 'The Dead Nation', returns with another controversial and illuminating foray into the darker side of Romania’s history.

The words of the title were spoken by soldier-turned-prime minister Ion Antonescu, whose virulent anti-Semitism fuelled the ethnic cleansing of the 1941 Odessa Massacre. In Radu Jude’s film, a young woman (Ioana Iacob) researching and rehearsing a pageant about the Romanian army’s ‘victory’ in capturing Odessa repeatedly encounters obstacles and objections, both from the authorities (who would prefer a sanitised official story) and from locals hired as extras, who have their own ideas about heroes and villains. Typically rigorous, witty and cineliterate in examining the uncomfortable relationship between past and present, Jude’s exhilaratingly freewheeling narrative channels both early Godard and Jancsó; at the same time, however, the forthright insistence on lucidity and honesty, however unsettling, is entirely his own. Strong stuff. Geoff Andrew, BFI

Radu Jude is an accomplished Romanian film director and screenwriter. Prior to winning the 2015 Silver Bear Best Director award for 'Aferim!', Jude directed international award-winning short films ('The Tube with a Hat' - 2006), 'It Can Pass Through the Wall' - 2014) and two feature films: 'The Happiest Girl in the World' (2009) and 'Everybody in Our Family' (2012). All Radu Jude’s feature films were selected at the BFI London Film Festival.

Written and Directed by: Radu Jude

Produced by: Ada Solomon

With: Ioana Iacob, Alexandru Dabija, Alex Bogdan

Romania-Czech Republic-France-Bulgaria-Germany

2018, 140min. Subtitles in English

PROGRAMME 

?I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians? (UK premiere)

Saturday, 13 October 2018, 20:20, ICA CINEMA, Screen 1

Sunday, 14 October 2018, 12:20, CURZON MAYFAIR CINEMA, Screen 1

In the presence of director Radu Jude, kindly supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute.

'Touch Me Not' (UK premiere)

Tuesday, 16 October 2018, 18:10, ICA CINEMA, Screen 1

Wednesday, 17 October 2018, 11:15, BFI SOUTHBANK, NFT2

Tickets: www.bfi.org.uk/lff