uppercaseprint

uppercaseprint

Director: Radu Jude
Country: Romania
Year: 2020
Running time: 128 min
In Romanian with English subtitles

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UPPERCASE PRINT

In 1981, chalk slogans written in uppercase letters started appearing in public spaces in the Romanian city of Botoşani. They demanded freedom, alluded to the democratic developments taking place in Romania’s socialist sister countries or simply called for improvements in the food supply. The culprit was Mugur Călinescu, a teenager who was still at school at the time and whose case is documented in the files of the Romanian secret police. Theatre director Gianina Cărbunariu created a documentary play based on this material.

Besides presenting the play, Radu Jude also uses archival footage from Romanian TV of the era. Cooking shows alternate with interrogations, transcripts of wiretapped phone calls with recommendations to exercise instead of taking sedatives. This dialectical montage creates an image of a dictatorial surveillance state, drawing on the authorized popular entertainment of the Ceaușescu regime in order to unmask it.

NOW PLAYING IN THEATERS AND ON VIRTUAL CINEMA!

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PHOTOS

 

Click on thumbnails for hi-res versions or download all stills as one zip file

PLAYDATES

9/24/21 Lightbox Film Center, Philadelphia, PA - U.S. Premiere!

11/5, 8/21 St. Louis International Film Festival, St. Louis, MO (in-person shows)

11/10-23/21 Metrograph At Home, New York, NY - (Virtual Cinema)

11/12, 14/21 Metrograph, New York, NY (Select in-person shows)

NOW PLAYING New Plaza Cinema, New York, NY (Virtual Cinema)

11/19-24/21 Laemmle's Royal, West Los Angeles, CA (Select in-person shows)

NOW PLAYING Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL (Virtual Cinema)

NOW PLAYING Music Box Theatre, Chicago, IL (Virtual Cinema)

NOW PLAYING Laemmle Virtual Cinema, Los Angeles, CA

NOW PLAYING The Guild, Albuquerque, NM (Virtual Cinema)

11/26-12/2/21 Zeitgeist Multi-Discliplinary Arts Center, Araby, LA (in-person shows)

NOW PLAYING Epsilon Spires, Brattleboro, VT (Virtual Cinema)

12/3, 4/21 Vancouver Intl. Film Festival Centre, Vancouver, BC (in-person shows)

NOW PLAYING Cinema Lamont, Detroit, MI (Virtual Cinema)

12/12, 16/21 AFI Silver, Silver Springs, MD (in-person shows)

12/17/21-1/27/22 Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland, OH (Virtual Cinema)

NOW PLAYING Roxie, San Francisco, CA (Virtual Cinema)

1/27/22 Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland, OH (in-person show)

1/23, 26/22 Austin Film Society, Austin TX (in-person shows)

3/3, 6/22 Cornell Cinema, Ithaca, NY (in-person shows)

REVIEWS

“Critic’s Pick!…A rousing, form-bending new feature by the Romanian auteur Radu Jude… Jude’s genius lies in his ability to turn [bureaucratic] words against themselves — to render them absurd through canny juxtapositions of text and image, documentary and fiction.” – Devika Girish, New York Times

"BEST FILMS OF 2021" LIST! “‘Uppercase Print’ expands the practice of nonfiction filmmaking into ingeniously imaginative dimensions… Jude, with his multiple dimensions of inquiry and imagination, poses philosophical questions about conscience and consciousness, media consumption and social order, that reach far beyond the case and era at hand to challenge the deceptions and delusions of ostensible present-day democracies.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“It is a fierce and impassioned denunciation of evil, part of a continuing wave of Romanian filmmaking dealing with the Ceaușescu and post-Ceaușescu eras.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"The piercing earnestness, very soon snuffed out, that pours from Lazarovici as he addresses us, his face framed close, stands out all the more against the regime's language of ruthless depersonalisation..."
– Carmen Gray, Sight & Sound

“This uncompromising but accessible and involving film should further boost the director's profile on the international circuit.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

 

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