Everybody in Our Family

Toată lumea din familia noastră

Radu Jude delivers on the promise of his first feature, The Happiest Girl in the World, with this superb black comedy.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director Radu Jude
  • Producer Ada Solomon
  • Screenwriter Radu Jude, Corina Sabău
  • With Şerban Pavlu, Sofia Nicolaescu, Mihaela Sîrbu
  • Romania-Netherlands 2012
  • 108 mins
  • Sales Films Boutique

With The Happiest Girl in the World, Radu Jude revealed himself as a promising participant in the remarkable rise of the ‘new Romanian cinema’. With this, his superb second feature, that promise is more than fulfilled. Things begin peacefully enough as thirty-something Marius awakens and readies himself to accompany five-year-old daughter Sofia – who lives with his estranged wife Otilia, her grandmother and Otilia’s new partner – on a long-arranged trip to the beach. But when he’s told, upon arrival at their apartment, that Sofia’s unwell and must stay at home, he refuses to take no for an answer – or leave... What ensues is an extraordinary rollercoaster ride for our emotions, with the virtually real-time narrative alternating between black comedy and suspense as the arguments spiral violently out of control. The acting’s spot-on, the tonal shifts skilfully executed, the claustrophobic tension almost unbearable. A frighteningly credible study of human interaction.
Geoff Andrew

Director statement

Very simply put, we could say that Sartre’s famous quote – ‘Hell is other people’ – lies at the basis of our characters’ thinking. The inability to assume their life, the lack of responsibility for their own actions, the blindness in front of life’s basic injustice, all these are attitudes that the main characters in the film seem to have. That’s why I think that, first of all, this film offers a metaphor for any conflict. The way the ex-husband and wife are fighting over their child is the expression of the same mechanism which lies at the foundation of all the conflicts: personal, professional, social, political and even military ones. In a way, our film is a war movie: the apartment becomes a real battlefield where all domestic hell breaks loose.
Radu Jude

Director biography

Born in Bucharest in 1977, he graduated in 2003 from the filmmaking department of Media University Bucharest. He worked as an assistant director on several feature films shot in Romania, including Amen by Costa-Gavras, Vacuums by Luke Creswell and Steve McNicholas, The Rage by Radu Muntean and The Death of Mr Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu, and made a number of shorts (including the multiply garlanded The Tube with a Hat) and one TV film prior to his LFF-screened feature debut with The Happiest Girl in the World.

Filmography

2003 Wrestling [s]
2004 The Black Sea [s]
2006 Alexandra [s]
2007 Lampa cu căciulă (The Tube with a Hat) [s]; Dimineata (In the Morning) [s]
2009 Cea mai fericită fată din lume (The Happiest Girl in the World)
2011 Film pentru prieteni (A Film for Friends)
2012 Toată lumea din familia noastră (Everybody in Our Family)