I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

“I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians.” The words spoken in the Council of Ministers in the summer of 1941 marked the beginning of Romania’s entanglements in the Holocaust under the fascist regime of General Antonescu during the Second World War. The young activist and director stages a re-enactment of the Odessa massacre in which 34,000 Jews, Roma and Ukrainians were slaughtered. The preparations for the re-enactment steadily morph into a farce. She is encountering constant efforts to downplay or modify history. The spectators are confronted with the dark sides of Romanian history and it becomes clear that anti-Semitism is no mere shadow of the past.

RO/CZ/FR/BG/DE, 2018, 140 min.; ro, fr, es, en, de / cz tit