In 1905, the rebellious sailors on the battleship Potemkin are given political asylum in Romania—an act of defiance against Russia. In 2021, as a sculptor plans an artwork inspired by the event, he unveils the truth behind the fictional elements of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

As sharp as a knife’s blade, Radu Jude’s short visually quotes Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet classic Battleship Potemkin to dissect the paradoxes of the present. Holding no punches, darkly comic musings on cinema and memory expose the sheer absurdity of artmaking under bureaucratic authorities.