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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
  • "[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
  • "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."
    Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
  • "The Diary of a Chambermaid may not be Jude’s most surprising provocation, but it seems like his freshest."
    Sarp Sozdinler, In Review Online
  • "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
  • "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
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