Kontinental '25

 

Writer/director Radu Jude

Jude with Silver Bear from Berlin

KONTINENTAL ’25             B                                                                                        Romania  (109 mi)  2025  d: Radu Jude                              

Premiering at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, this is a satirical city portrait that evolves into a crisis of conscience film that won a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.  From the maker of eight feature films in the last ten years, including I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari) (2018), Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc) (2021), Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii) (2023), and a second release this year, DRACULA (2025), Jude describes this film as a tribute to Roberto Rossellini’s Europa '51 (1952), where the wealthy protagonist (Ingrid Bergman) is deluged by guilt after her son’s suicide, while the Italian elite has already forgotten the traumas of World War II.  In a distinct homage, a poster for the Rossellini film can be seen hanging in a movie theater bar.  Similarly, court bailiff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) is besieged by that same guilt after a homeless man she tried to help committed suicide during a contentious eviction, leaving her overwhelmed by feelings of doubt and inadequacy, questioning her own role in such a horrible tragedy.  The film opens playfully in a forest, however, where the first realization that comes to mind is:  Who knew dinosaurs were living in the forests of Romania?  Radu Jude has a little fun adding this comical surrealist element, which comes as a major surprise, as he is a director largely known for his in-your-face social realism, part of a neorealist tradition where poverty is infused into the subject matter.  Stripped down to its bare essentials, the film was shot by his regular cinematographer Marius Panduru in just 10 days during a break in the filming of DRACULA on an iPhone 15, with no lights, no grips, and a miniscule budget, initially proposed to be a Romanian TV movie, as Jude relies entirely on long conversations and sharp situational humor, crafting another brilliant absurdist comedy-drama infused with his signature sardonic wit.  Once again dissecting Romania’s contradictions in its uneasy transition from socialism to capitalism, this is a continuation of a body of work that regularly questions the political and social conditions of contemporary Romania, though this time viewed through the lens of an exploding housing market in parallel with growing inequalities, exacerbating the question of economic injustice, leading to a conflicted middle class caught between past and present, bearing a close proximity to Haneke’s middle-class criticisms.  Part of the second generation of filmmakers comprising New Romanian Cinema, this is a testament to Jude’s ability to create something out of nothing, in this case a socio-political allegory, exploring the moral and spiritual poverty of these bleak times, where the goal is to make social reality visible in its harshness, without embellishment, with all roads leading to existential desolation, where there’s even a scene from Robert Aldrich’s apocalyptic nightmare Kiss Me Deadly (1955), along with a TV screening of Edgar G. Ulmer’s film noir  Detour (1945), another film shot in a week for next to nothing.  Yet another variation on Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, where we, as spectators, are never truly “innocent,” with Jude crafting a fascinating experiment that, while more austere than usual, still carries his razor-sharp commentary and biting satire, where the caustic manner and subversive tone always influence the overall vision.

In the city of Cluj-Napoca in Romania’s Transylvania region, a bailiff named Orsolya accompanies the local police in evicting a cantankerous, constantly swearing homeless man named Ion (Gabriel Spahiu), a collector of recyclables who had been temporarily squatting in an unused boiler room, where the building is scheduled for demolition in an effort to modernize the city (enriching a handful of developers who are described as mobsters), to make way for the construction of a luxury Kontinental boutique hotel.  Apparently she had some dealings with this man before, and while exposing the absurd cruelty of bureaucracy, in this case carrying out the interests of the rich, she graciously gives him some time and space, and a few minutes alone to collect his things, hoping to alleviate any unnecessary pressure, but she is thoroughly aghast to discover that he tragically commits suicide rather than be transported to an emergency shelter, where she ends up plagued by her own complicity in his death.  Ion actually introduces the film, seen amusingly wandering through a dinosaur-infested forest, an actual Dino-Park, a perfect metaphor for post-communist capitalism, before making his way into the city, establishing his presence as a curious character living on the fringe of society, seen dumpster-diving and begging outdoor restaurant customers for money, amusingly harassed by a ridiculously threatening robot police dog, where the plight of the poor contrasts mightily with the picturesque elegance of the city central square surrounded by dramatic European architecture from the beginning of the last century.  Much like Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), the film begins with a victim and then shifts focus to the perpetrator, as Orsolya carries the rest of the picture, spiraling into a moral crisis, seeking solace from her husband, but his mind immediately turns to sex, forcing her to back out of a planned vacation to Greece with her family as her life is thrown into an emotional tailspin.  While hardly a criminal, she finds herself complicit in a mechanism that trivializes inequalities and places her on the side of the wealthy real estate perpetrators.  The film depicts the difficulty of living with or dealing with one’s conscience, where collective guilt is a societal byproduct of actions necessary for moral survival, as the middle class is required to serve the powerful elites without ever benefiting from the prosperity produced.  Told by friends that she did nothing wrong, and that she’s not responsible, yet no one seems able to understand her or relieve her pain, nonetheless she feels guilty, burdened by a guilty conscience, which only grows worse after learning from the media that Ion was once an Olympic athlete, a forgotten national hero.   As an ethnic Hungarian in Romania, she quickly becomes an easy target from far-right nationalist critics, vilified online through social media as the Hungarian woman who drove a patriotic Romanian to his death.  Fusing fiction and documentary, with election posters promising “honor and loyalty in the service of my country,” this is a reflection of the quiet collapse of empathy in modern Europe, and an uncomfortably accurate reflection of our modern-day malaise, and while the filmmaker refuses to be associated exclusively with so-called political cinema, this more accessible effort feels funnier, more uninhibited, freer, and more surprising.

Searching for understanding and moral clarity, Jude’s camera lingers in front of historical monuments, which evoke political lessons, while there’s an oppressive aspect to the almost documentary quality of expansive shots of construction sites, reflective of the rampant property speculation in the middle of a real estate boom, where old ruins and historic buildings are contrasted with new-build luxury developments with gated private residences, as the still-growing city advances into modernity.  Both Orsolya and her friend Dorina (Oana Mardare) appease their guilt by donating to charities, while also discussing the Hungarian-Romanian conflict, where Transylvania has been passed back and forth multiple times since the 19th century, resulting in a backlash of resentment from both sides, where we are told “Romanians stole Cluj and Transylvania from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”  These are the words of her mother (Annamária Biluska), a self-professed Orbán supporter and proud Hungarian, who dismisses Romania’s so-called economic advancements, believing they remain among the more culturally backward countries in Europe, describing Romanians as “serfs” and “peasants,” as it remains an economic and political system rooted in inequality.  Even the food delivery drivers are nationalistic, with Orsolya running into Fred (Adonis Tanța), one of her former law students with an infectious charm who is now a food delivery cyclist, wearing a backpack that reads “I’m Romanian,” a survival tactic meant to distinguish him from others Indian drivers from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who are easy targets for city drivers, who do not hesitate to run them over.  A failed academic prone to recounting anecdotes about long-dead Zen Buddhist monks, they spend a wild night drinking, debating, and eventually having drunken sex in a public park.  Meanwhile, the streets abound with slogans, posters, declarations of principle now devoid of all meaning, like the anti-communist altar where Orsolya and Fred idly sit drunk, carrying out discussions on Ukraine and Gaza, where ordinary citizens feel so powerless.  Afterwards she has a long discussion with an orthodox priest (Șerban Pavlu), hoping to clarify the suffocating effects of her lingering guilt, where he also reminds her that this is not her fault, as a reading of the scriptures concludes suicide is a sin against oneself and humanity, and no one bears responsibility but the person who took their own life.  While removed from the Roman Catholic Church list of mortal sins, the Church is now willing to look at the individual circumstances of each self-inflicted death, like what weighed upon the victim’s consciousness that led to such a drastic action, offering prayers and forgiveness, which are also extended to Orsolya.  In this maelstrom of misfortune the hollow words of the priest consulted by Orsolya seem a very meager consolation.  The film seemingly stalls near the end, yet part of what’s confounding is just how repetitious this becomes, with Orsolya spouting endless versions of the suicide episode ad nauseam, confessing her alleged sins at each and every turn, literally obsessed with her own personal failures, even as others repeatedly forgive her.  While she may be legally innocent, she still ends up feeling terrible, plagued by self-doubt, like she didn’t do enough, but what she ultimately discovers is that guilt is a relative concept in contemporary Romania.  Essentially a film about displacement, whether it be political, personal, or moral, Orsolya continues to search for clarity but finds only contradictions, yet ends up exposing the wider indifference of today’s society, where nationalist polemics, racist sayings, and aggressive misogyny serve as the norm.