“Barbarians” wins Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary film fest

Romanian director Radu Jude was awarded the Crystal Globe for Best Feature Film at the 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for his story of a director who refuses to compromise with Holocaust deniers.

Jude’s film, entitled “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians”, conveys a little-known chapter of WWII in which the popular Romanian general Ion Antonescu led a massacre of Jews. It also ingeniously updates Hannah Arendt’s incisive work on the banality of evil.

The Grand Jury also awarded two Special Mentions, one for the Russian co-production film “Jumpman” and one for the Slovenian co-production film “History of Love”. The East of the West Award went to a distinctive debut by Elizaveta Stishova “Suleiman Mountain”, an original account of the life in Kyrgyzstan.

A Special Jury Prize in the East of West Competition was granted to Hungarian film “Blossom Valley”. The new film by Vitaly Mansky “Putin’s Witnesses”, also made in co-production with the Czech Republic, won the Documentary Films Competition. The Documentary Special Jury Prize was awarded to the film “Walden”.

Author: Brian Kenety