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.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii)

 

Writer/director Radu Jude

Director on the set with Ilinca Manolache

DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii)   C+                                                                                                                      Romania  Luxembourg  France  Croatia  Switzerland  Great Britain  (163 mi)  2023  d: Radu Jude  

While Jude had great success with his earlier films, I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari) (2018) and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc) (2021), this is something else altogether, and while they play out like a contemporary Bucharest trilogy, you wonder just who the audience is for this film, as ugly doesn’t even begin to describe it, though it was listed among the top ten films by Cahiers du Cinéma: Top Ten Films of 2023 - Year-End Lists and John Waters, whose comments are worth mentioning, “A maddeningly radical, tedious, shockingly repetitious, brilliant two-hour-and-43-minute Godard–meets–Harmony Korine Romanian masterpiece in which we spend way too much time locked in the car of a confident, trashy, gum-chewing workaholic PA for a movie company as she does her chores.  When I finished watching the movie, I was pretty sure I didn’t like it, but when I woke up the next morning, I realized I loved it.  Suffer for cinema!  Sometimes it’s worth it!”  While it has the same sardonic tone, taking provocative cinema to the extreme, using satire as a cutting edge as Jude becomes a Hunter S. Thompson gonzo provocateur, where the crudeness of the vulgarity on display is hard to watch, making this a different experience altogether, targeting the attention-challenged TikTok generation, where it’s simply exhausting to sit through for nearly three hours and may challenge anyone to maintain a sense of optimism.  Not sure you’ll ever find a film with as much profanity, most of it aggressively in-your-face with torrid sexual obscenities, with an almost machine gun-like repetition that may sour after a while, as you wonder just what’s the point.  And that’s where this differs from his other films, which typically dealt with the darker aspects of Romanian history, where the message was a core aspect of their existence.  In this film, not so much, as it’s instead all about the brash attitude, like rappers spouting their shit, or social media (or politicians) taking lies and bad taste to the extreme in order to attract viewers, using corrosive black humor in the style of Charlie Hebdo which is baffling and strange, though the onslaught can grow tiresome, as there’s a serious lack of empathy in this film, which is no accident, as it’s a reflection of the changing modern world and the over-controlling corporate challenges that await us.  Using absurd exaggerations as a weapon in offensively toxic ways, Jude apparently couldn’t care less whether you like or comprehend what he’s doing, creating instead this jumbled mess of late Godard dialectical incoherency that defies viewers to stick around till the end, leaving a putrid stench in your mouth afterwards in what the director has described as a “humorless comedy,” which is actually the term he used for his previous film, but it makes more sense here, as the director is literally defying viewers to care about what they see onscreen.  The pessimism felt throughout this exhausting ordeal is unmistakable, an exposé of relentless dehumanization and the rapid decline of civilization, where you don’t kill the messenger for sending this abhorrent message, yet a lingering post-Soviet malaise hovers all over this film, like a shroud of low-lying gaseous fumes contaminating everyone who breathes.  While it’s a uniquely innovative cinematic manifesto, it also drags us through the mud of the worst aspects of social media, which are like endless commercials, forcing viewers to sit through the spewing toxic wreckage of moral rot that we would otherwise routinely avoid, as few films show such casual examples of ingrained prejudice, worn like a badge of honor, where one small takeaway is that none of this would be possible without our obsessional over-reliance on the smartphone.  Many find this scathingly funny, but it lacks the humanity and subversive hilarity of German filmmaker Maren Ade’s 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann, which is really funny, where an outsider’s view takes us into an extravagantly upscale Bucharest mall, complete with the first IMAX theater in Romania, an indoor ice-skating rink, roller-coaster, and multiple children’s playgrounds, yet it exists in a country where hardly anyone has any money.  While the title suggests a sci-fi apocalyptical experience, or something along the lines of Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), but the title is actually from Polish poet Stanisław Jerzy Lec’s 1957 collection of Unkempt Thoughts, while the film itself is more of a satiric exposé of modern angst, a stream-of-consciousness, long-rambling, nihilist dissertation on the challenges of capitalism tinged with fascist leanings, shot on a mix of iPhone recordings with grainy black and white Super 16mm by Marius Panduru, who has shot most all of Jude’s films.  It’s interesting how Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (La Bête) (2023) has apocalyptic, end of the world implications, while this film exposes the tedium and banality of modern life that may actually drive us to it.

In keeping with the Eastern European traditions of Dušan Makavejev, Jan Němec, and Věra Chytilová, life behind the Iron Curtain under the authoritative dictates of Communism created a repressive need for the outlandish, with filmmakers often resorting to surrealism or exaggerated existential absurdity to reflect the state of mind of ordinary people caught up in suffocating circumstances, literally crying out to be heard, where there was an insatiable desire to be free.  While Cristian Mungiu and his Palme d’Or winning film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007) may be the best known Romanian filmmaker, over the past twenty years Jude has become one of Romania’s most provocative and prolific auteurs, directing 10 solo feature films, numerous short films, more than 100 commercials, plus a television series, though he was a three-time reject of Romania’s national film school, as he is brazenly dismissive of any formal conventions, currently a resident in Berlin under The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.  His breakthrough film, an understated family study Lampa cu caciula/ The tube with a hat | Radu Jude (2006) YouTube (22:37), is one of the most acclaimed Romanian short films ever made.  In December 2023, alongside 50 other filmmakers, Jude signed an open letter published in the French daily newspaper Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza for humanitarian aid, and the release of all hostages (Claire Denis, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, ...).  A prolific reader, making obscure references to books and history in films that are ultra-contemporary and entirely unique, fusing highbrow with lowbrow, capturing the dialectical relationship between modern art and popular culture, enthralled by the random, amateur nature of unfiltered TIkTok clips, Jude’s ferociously bleak, helter-skelter film is a mixed-media collage targeting modern-day Romania, with its corrupt politics, rampant capitalism gone awry, previous old-style Communism, racism, sexism, traffic jams and terrible highway driving, though perhaps most vociferously skewering internet culture, becoming an absurdist epic about all those little things that are taking us to the end of the world, while our own capitulation to these same exploitive forces leaves us slowly accepting and embracing our inevitable end.  Featuring the exhausted, sleep-deprived, and underpaid film production assistant Angela (Ilinca Manolache, with a small role in both his prior films), she couldn’t be more bitter or cynical about her employer never giving her a break, always pushing her to do more, suggesting she drink another Red Bull (taken in excess it is linked to abnormal heart rhythm, heart attack, and even death), as she resentfully drives around the congested, billboard-laced streets of Bucharest filming work accident victims who go on camera encouraging the use of safety equipment, hoping they will be the one selected to air on television, as that ensures them winning 500 Euros.  Reminiscent of the old TV show Queen for a Day (1956-64), where contestants competed in tales of misfortune, with the audience determining whose hardship was most worthy of the grand prize, where the show itself was basically a diversion for the network’s brazen attempts to sell commercials.  It’s worth mentioning that working yourself to death, driving until you are exhausted, is how many, including this director, got their start in cinema as shamelessly exploited young production assistants, doing the thankless and often dangerous work behind the scenes, with Jude indicating that part of the film’s inspiration was a fellow production assistant’s death in a car crash from falling asleep at the wheel after working ridiculously long hours.  Manolache has been heavily praised for her scathing performance, which includes an outrageous alter-ego character she concocted on her own years earlier during Covid lockdown, the wildly profane Bobiță, a modern day Borat, a repugnant, bald-headed misogynist with a penchant for obscenity-laced tirades and a distinctive male appearance from using a Snapchat face filter, superimposing an AI face over hers on TikTok parodies spewing right-wing, Andrew Tate-style venom that she posts on her phone several times a day, describing Romania as a “nation of sluts and pimps,” as hugely aggressive satire merges into the grotesque, which is viewed as a reflection of the overall society.  In a karmic twist of fate, Tate just happened to be indicted a year ago in Romania on charges of rape and human trafficking.  Ironically, Angela, the driver, is on the receiving end of this same kind of toxic masculinity vulgarity, as she is continually harassed by sexist, hostility-spewing male drivers on the road, becoming a regular target of profanity-laced insults, as misogyny is normalized, reproduced, and legitimized, while human suffering is caricatured and commercialized. 

The unexpected twist with this film is intercutting Angela’s monotonous travels in her car with clips from Lucian Bratu’s obscure 1982 film ANGELA MOVES ON, made during the communist dictatorship of Ceaușescu, one of the few with a female protagonist, while the screenwriter was also a woman, film critic Eva Sârbu, now embraced as a feminist film, subtitled “a conversation with a 1982 film,” which follows a female cab driver named Angela (Dorina Lazăr) visiting many of the same locations.  Conjuring up images of the past with the present, including food lines, which were forbidden to be shown in that era, and a long line of assembled people waiting to board a bus, it’s worth mentioning that at the time very few could afford to take cabs, where the world has changed significantly since the liberation from Ceaușescu in 1989, yet there’s a blasé attitude about newly won freedoms, where in both films there’s a crushing indifference to the world around them.  Both Angelas they spend an inordinate amount of time in their car, with the camera always finding the exact same angle in Jude’s film, quite a leap from the front seat car scenes of Kiarostami’s static camera in TASTE OF CHERRY (1997) or TEN (2002), where the present is shot in black and white, as she listens to raucously provocative music on the radio, anything to keep her from falling asleep at the wheel while working an 18-hour day, often interrupted with more instructions from her boss, a victim of an endless circle of exploitation, while the earlier footage is in color, often slowed down or Zoomed-in, as the director is fond of changing speed, yet both female characters are continually objectified, exhibiting their own private thoughts about the people they meet, often sarcastic jibes about what jerks the men are, exuding their own fierce independence.  The earlier film shows a completely different Bucharest, as there are less cars, which look exactly the same, no capitalist ads, while curiously showing the old neighborhood intact that Ceaușescu leveled to build his Palace of the Parliament, a massive urban planning project that displaced 40,000 citizens, and while there is expressed anger, it’s nothing like what we see in the modern era.  There’s no background information about the injured workers, who are viewed only superficially, not as real people, manipulated by an Austrian television production company operating in Romania, so they come off in a purely pathetic light, often surrounded by family, all hoping for a chance at the money they so desperately need.  On the other hand, the television executives have an aristocratic air of superiority, characterized by marketing executive Nina Hoss as Doris Goethe, supposedly the great-great-great-granddaughter of the famous German poet (his last heir died in the 19th century), where her casual indifference to the problems in Romania suggest she couldn’t care less, as all that matters is how her company looks, providing a façade of caring about safety regulations, which is all a hoax, as it’s really all about making money, where it’s surprising how easily Romanians willingly submit to foreign interests, like some sort of Faustian bargain.  In a Zoom call, we see her face floating over the Chicago River with a Trump property to the right.  German director Uwe Boll appears in a cameo as himself directing a cheesy sci-fi horror movie, where he gets into a conversation with Angela while she’s making the rounds, as she’s fascinated that he actually threatened to beat up film critics who despise his films, bragging about his boxing ability, Clip: Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (MUBI) YouTube (1:30), which plays into Bobiță’s misogynist leanings.  There is a silent memorial montage of more than 100 crosses constructed along the side of the road paying tribute to those who perished on a dangerous highway, where despite 600 deaths, nothing has been done to alleviate the road hazards.  A lengthy final sequence is the coup de grâce, featuring a fixed camera film shoot of a man injured outside the factory where he worked when a car ran into an unlit and unmarked crossing gate at night which hit the man in the head, leaving him in a coma for a year and paralyzed from the waist down afterwards, now spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.  Surrounded by his wife, daughter, and mother, the safety video is staged right in front of the factory where the accident occurred, where we see the rusty gate, but his testimony is gradually altered in repeated scenes, as after each he’s instructed not to mention certain words that might reduce viewership, subject them to lawsuits, or even worse, public scrutiny, peeling away everything that’s human about his story, with the victim showing a mounting frustration, which culminates when it starts to rain and the family is soaked waiting to finish the shoot.  Behind the scenes we hear voices speaking, where the subject is actually belittled and denigrated by the film crew, clearly expressing a pro-factory slant, as they blame him for the accident, where viewers are able to see how easily corporate sponsors can manipulate content to suit their own interests.  While the incidents are actually due to blatant security breaches of the company, with all the accidents occurring after long overtime hours, they use these videos to clean their hands of negligence.  Jude asks viewers to weigh the harm done by the corporations or Bobiță, as both feed us a load of crap.  But which is more toxic?  Which causes more irreversible trauma?  The biggest surprise, only learned afterwards, is that his mother is actually a much older Dorina Lazăr, the star of the 1982 film intercut throughout, suggesting not much at all has changed in Romania, particularly when it comes to women, while it also remains the poorest country in the EU, though they’re quick to point out that Albania (not in the EU) is worse.