The Dead Nation

  • Archive - Festival 33
  • Director: Radu Jude
  • Romania 2017
  • 83 minutes
  • Romanian
  • Subtitles in Hebrew

The Dead Nation shows a collection of photographs from a small Romanian town in the 1930s and 1940s. The soundtrack, composed mostly of excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, depicts what the photographs do not: the rising of antisemitism and eventually the harrowing depiction of the Romanian persecution of the Jews, a subject rarely talked in contemporary Romania.

“A highly accessible but complex, ambiguous and significant work of cinematic art” – Hollywood Reporter.

Filmography: Scarred Hearts (2016), Aferim! (2015), Everybody in Our Family (2012), The Happiest Girl in the World (2009).


  • Director Radu Jude
  • Production Ada Solomon
  • Script Radu Jude
  • Cinematography Radu Jude
  • Editing Catalin Cristutiu
  • Festivals Locarno
  • Source Hi Film Production SRL, Bucharest