Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc/ Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, the latest film of Romanian director Radu Jude, has won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale.

The win comes six years after Jude received the Silver Bear for the historical drama Aferim!.

The international jury that handed the awards in the main competition was made up of six directors who previously won the Berlinale’s grand trophy, including Romanian Adina Pintilie, the 2018 winner for Touch Me Not.

“The Golden Bear goes to a film which has that rare and essential quality of a lasting art work. It captures on screen the very content and essence, the mind and body, the values and the raw flesh of our present moment in time. Of this very moment of human existence. It does so by provoking the spirit of our time (i.e., zeitgeist), by slapping it, by challenging it to a duel. And while doing that, it also challenges this present moment in cinema, shaking, with the same camera movement, our social and our cinematic conventions. It is an elaborated film as well as a wild one, clever and childish, geometrical and vibrant, imprecise in the best way. It attacks the spectator, evokes disagreement, but leaves no one with a safety distance,” the jury said in a statement.

The trophies will be presented at a gala set to take place in June.

Jude’s latest film is produced by Ada Solomon, who also worked with him on Aferim! This is the producer’s second film to receive the Golden Bear, after Călin Peter Netzer’s 2013 The Child’s Pose.

The film, which follows what happens after a secondary-school teacher uploads an amateur porn video online, had its world premiere at the Berlin festival.

It stars Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Olimpia Mălai, Nicodim Ungureanu, Alexandru Potocean, Andi Vasluianu, Alex Bogdan, Ilinca Manolache, Dana Voicu, Axinte, Adrian Enache, and Ilinca Hărnuț.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a production of microfilm, in co-production with Paul Thiltges Distributions, Endorfilm, Kinorama, with the support of the National Film Center (CNC), Film Fund Luxembourg, Czech Film Fund, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Artekino International in partnership with Bord Cadre Films, and Sovereign Films.

Jude's debut feature film, Cea mai fericită fată din lume/ The Happiest Girl in the World, won the CICAE Art Cinema award at the 2009 Berlinale. His 2012 feature Toată lumea din familia noastră/ Everybody in Our Family premiered in Berlinale’s Forum section. Last year, he had two films screened in the festival’s Forum section: Tipografic majuscul/ Uppercase Print and Ieșirea trenurilor din gară/ The Exit of the Trains.

His 2016 Inimi cicatrizate/ Scarred Hearts received two awards at the Locarno International Film Festival and brought him the best director award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival. Jude’s 2018 Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari/ I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians received the Crystal Globe Award at the 53rd edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival - the first Romanian feature to receive the distinction of the Czech film event.

(Photo by Silviu Ghetie/ courtesy of Rollercoaster PR)

simona@romania-insider.com