He was a field marshal, prince and lover of Catherine the Great. He allegedly also had village backdrops built for the latter, which were intended to deceive them about the population development in the empire – the so-called “Potemkin Villages”. Such dummies still exist in film productions today, but Grigory Potemkin is not known as the godfather of set builders. The Romanian director and festival favorite Radu Jude has named a film after him: The 18-minute film “Potemkinistii” (“The Potemkinists”) opens this year’s Romanian Film Festival in the Munich Film Museum, in which he spins a subtle dialogue at the feet of a communist monument .
Radu Jude’s short film will be shown on November 9th, followed by the screening of the feature film “Metronom”, which shows a brief moment of cultural opening in communist Romania in 1972. It’s about a young woman with heartache, western pop music and a radio DJ from Munich… The director and screenwriter Alexandru Belc will be personally present at the performance. The Romanian Film Festival is taking place for the 17th time, this year under the motto “Past versus Future”. Ten new films from the Southeast European country will be shown over seven evenings, by directors such as Bogdan Mirica (“Boss”), Mihai Mincan (“Spre Nord – To the North”) and Tudor Giurgiu (“Libertate – Freedom”).
Romania has been considered an exciting film country for years, regularly winning palms, bears and shells at festivals. The hero of the final film “Cautatorul de vant” (“The Windseeker”) goes on his last journey: According to a medical diagnosis, Radu (Dan Bordeianu) only has two or three months to live, so he moves to a remote area in the east of Romania back. There the wind blows constantly, there he learns to appreciate the value of life anew.
Romanian Film Festival, from Thursday, November 9th, to Sunday, November 19th, Munich Film MuseumSt.-Jakobs-Platz 1