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

Radu Jude dissects the rise of neofascism and the reemergence of anti-Semitism in Europe in this metafictional black comedy. Staging a piece about notorious Romanian Nazi collaborator Ion Antonescu, who ordered the murder of several thousand Jews and made the defiant declaration that gives the film its title, contemporary theater director Adriana runs into government interference, public indifference, and extras who seem a little too enthused about playing Nazi officers. Combining Brechtian metacommentary, social satire, and wide-ranging intellectual analysis, Jude’s film is “a complicated meditation on the responsibilities—and limits—of art in the face of horror” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).