Dracula
Radu Jude / Romania, Luxembourg & Brazil / 2025 / 170 min
No one messes with national myths with the same recklessness as the Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude. This time, he pulls Dracula out of his coffin in a pitch-black comedy from Transylvania.
Dracula seems to be Romania’s most enduring export, and now Radu Jude (‘Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World’, CPH:DOX 2023) has also sunk his teeth into the old bloodsucker. In his new, totally unpredictable and carnevalesque film, the provocative iconoclast offers an original interpretation – or rather twelve! – of his country’s most notorious figure.
A frustrated filmmaker in creative crisis entrusts his new film to an AI chatbot, and the result is an avalanche of increasingly scandalous, vulgar, and kitschy vignettes. The Dracula myth is deconstructed chapter by chapter, each time in a new genre. The nearly three-hour-long ‘Dracula’ is possibly the most egregious misuse of the character to date, but also a wildly entertaining satire that delightfully attempts to drive a wooden stake through the heart of the vampire (and the myth).
