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The Diary of a Chambermaid

Directed by Radu Jude
Film Movement
2026
94 Minutes
Romania, France
French, Romanian, English
Comedy, Drama
Not Rated
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Film Movement

Gianina, a young Romanian, works as a housekeeper for a bourgeois family in Bordeaux. In the evenings, she rehearses the role of a maid with an amateur theater troupe in an adaptation of The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau. She takes care of Louen, her employers’ son, while her own daughter is growing up far from her, in Romania. The maternal absence deepens into a wound but, as Christmas approaches, the promise of a reunion begins to take shape.

Director & Cast

  • Director: Radu Jude
  • Starring: Ana Dumitrascu
  • Starring: Mélanie Thierry
  • Starring: Vincent Macaigne
  • Starring: Marie Rivière
  • Starring: Louen Bouteiller

Where to Watch

Trailer

Film Movement

Photos

Reviews

  • "Diary of a Chambermaid... ends on a bittersweet note whose nimbleness fully encapsulates why Radu Jude is among our great filmmakers. "
    Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
  • "[A] movie that never ditches its razor-sharp view of class exploitation: it may appear now in new forms and iterations, but even a century or so after the book came out, it’s still the same story."
    Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
  • "Just as Mirbeau’s novel decried the disparities between the haves and have-nots in his era, in his own subdued way Jude argues that that divide has only grown worse in the last 125 years."
    Tim Grierson, Screen Daily
  • "The diary’s final entry is its best, an unadorned and affecting maternal melodrama with geopolitical implications, and a deus ex machina ending punctuated, in the film’s closing, shot, by an ironic wink."
    Mark Asch, Little White Lies
  • "The Diary of a Chambermaid may not be Jude’s most surprising provocation, but it seems like his freshest."
    Sarp Sozdinler, In Review Online
  • "[T]his satiric anti-capitalist takedown builds confidently towards an explosive final act that'll likely catch you unawares."
    James Mottram, Radio Times
  • "Radu Jude manages to construct a picture that is not only intelligent and witty but also incredibly thought-provoking...."
    Hector A. Gonzalez, InSession Film
  • "Jude’s Diary of a Chambermaid is an exuberant hodgepodge of genre modes...."
    William Repass, Slant Magazine
  • "Jude executes the melange with certainty, mixing it all together into a welcome velouté of political modernity and dark humour."
    Olivia Popp, Cineuropa
  • "Like Mirbeau before him, Jude dissects bourgeois rot through formal mischief and corrosive irony, though he does so for an age of migrant precarity, performative liberalism, and atomized labor. Grade: A."
    Martin Tsai, AwardsWatch
Nominated
Directors' Fortnight Audience Award
Cannes Film Festival
Official Selection
New York Film Festival
Official Selection
Toronto Int'l. Film Festival

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Toronto Int'l Film Festival Toronto ON September 10, 2026
New York Film Festival New York NY October 8, 2026