(Jewish Group) Indie film uses shock value to discuss Jewish persecution in Romania

[Behind the Aegis]

Sex, lies, videotape — and antisemitism: Indie film uses shock value to discuss Jewish persecution in Romania

It begins with a hardcore sex scene. It ends with a debate about Holocaust education.

This is the strange and — for better and worse — unforgettable world of “Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn,” an oddball Romanian arthouse film that is seeing a U.S. release this week after winning the prestigious Golden Bear at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival and being selected as the country’s Oscar entry for best international film.

Coincidentally, Romania just enacted a law this week making Holocaust education mandatory in all high schools — a development that the history teacher at the center of “Bad Luck Banging” would likely meet with some skepticism.

In the movie, which was filmed and set during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a history teacher at an elite Bucharest prep school (Katia Pascariu) films a sex tape with her husband and uploads it to an adult website. After her students find the video, she risks losing her job. The first third of the movie shows the teacher, Emi, wandering around Bucharest. The second is a discursive detour: in Godardian fashion, the film presents various words and concepts and defines them as it sees fit (“Children: Political prisoners of their parents”). The film’s final third depicts a climactic parent-teacher conference, during which Emi must defend her reputation against irate parents who are demanding her head on a platter.

It’s during this segment that the storyline suddenly pivots into a discussion of Romanian antisemitism. As the parents work to gather additional evidence to support their claims that Emi is an immoral teacher, they point to her lessons on the Holocaust, which include telling her students that Romanian troops, not just Nazis, murdered Jews of their own volition; the parents characterize such lessons as “indoctrinating our children.” (That quote inexplicably comes from a priest wearing an “I Can’t Breathe” mask. Is he a parent? The movie doesn’t elaborate.)

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Sounds if this may parallel some issues here.