Radu Jude: ‘My responsibility is to cinema, not to the audience’

What could connect a 19th-century French chambermaid, Romanian migrant workers and Roberto Rossellini? Ask Radu Jude, and quite a lot. In his latest film, the director brings these seemingly distant worlds together to focus on the unseen human cost of economic migration. When we meet again at the Vienna Film Festival after two years, our conversation ranges from cinema to politics, from exploitation to good intentions, from pessimism to the ability to see things as they really are.

Jude explains why he does not work for the Romanian tourist office, shares the unexpected story of how he came to act in Arthur Harari’s film, and makes us see what a ridiculous scene our perfectly ordinary-looking interview might actually be. And of course there is a new film on the way. Two, in fact...