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.

2025 Top Ten List #5 Caught By the Tides (Feng liu yi dai)

 

Director Jia Zhang-ke

Jia with Zhao Tao

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (Feng liu yi dai)             A-                                                              China  (111 mi)  2024  d: Jia Zhang-ke

Not even a wildfire can burn all the weeds, they will grow back in the spring breeze.                   —Underground, by Brain Failure, 野火 YouTube (46 seconds)

From the director of PLATFORM (2000), UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002), THE WORLD (2004), Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (2006), 2020 Top Ten List #4 I Wish I Knew (Hai shang chuan qi) (2010), 2013 Top Ten List #3 A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding), 2015 Top Ten List #2 Mountains May Depart (Shan he gu ren), Ash Is Purest White (Jiang hu er nv) (2018), and 2020 Top Ten List #8 Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Yi zhi you dao hai shui bian lan), Jia Zhang-ke, who makes an acting appearance in Guan Hu’s Black Dog (Gou zhen) (2024), is one of the better chroniclers of our times, where his films play out like existential essays that capture what is so essential about living through the different waves of change through China today.  His sixth film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was completely overlooked and often misunderstood by critics, it is essentially a Covid pandemic film, where filming in China was particularly difficult, leaving the director with some time on his hands, so Jia, with the help of 3 editors, brilliantly weaves together footage he had filmed over the past two or three decades, some of which was originally filmed without any specific purpose, where he ended up experimenting with diverse filming techniques rather than capturing specific scenes, creating an abstract, freeform collage that can be formally challenging to watch, more of a musical, architectural, and social kaleidoscope than a recognizable narrative, quickly realizing this could be the basis for a new film.  Like the cinematic essays from Chris Marker or Adam Curtis, considered provocative cinema due to its intellectual inaccessibility for most viewers, Jia uses impressionistic images and sensations of the past to maneuver through space and time, across a spectrum of people and places to meditate on intersecting ideas of history and memory, tradition and modernity, and also reality and art, which is something of a reflection on Susan Sontag’s nature of photography (On Photography) which suggests that images shape perception, mediate experience, while influencing our relationship with the world, where this turns out to be his most innovative depiction of 21st century China to date.  At the heart of the film is an undying love that spans decades, through different cities and changing careers, showcasing a collection of meetings and departures through the years, where they always manage to find a way back to each other.  Approximately 10 scenes from the film have appeared in Jia’s previous films, including footage and outtakes from UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002), Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (2006) and Ash Is Purest White (Jiang hu er nv) (2018), which was itself a twenty-year journey through the fast-changing landscape, yet both of those later films share the same time frames and settings, as well as familiar characters and thematic content, so the use of new footage allows the filmmaker to radically alter the context. 

The common denominator in all these films is the presence of actress Zhao Tao, the director’s wife, a graduate of the Department of Chinese Folk Dance at the Beijing Dance Academy, where someone needs to just come out and acknowledge that she is one of the great screen actresses of our time, possessing an indomitable spirit that burns with subtle brilliance, wit, and the ferociousness of an independent woman whose steps are haunted by the barely recognizable yet everchanging landscape around her, where her presence here is completely captivating.  Reminiscent of the deeply personal working relationship between John Cassavetes and his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, both directors made a comparable number of films together starring their wives, maybe 7 or 8 films, where that work is easily the best in their respective careers, where the intimacy factor captured onscreen is simply astonishing.  A portrait of a women’s growth, awakening, and evolution, part of the “change generation,” where the Covid pandemic woke China’s young people up to the reality that their society is oriented to the values and priorities of the elderly, whose patriarchal, Confucian-influenced truths are very different from their own, yet what stands out in this film is that Zhao Tao never utters a single word in the entire film, though she does sing a song, representing a sector of society that has experienced very rapid changes over several decades, experiencing joy, anger, sorrow, regret, and happiness, and while her performance is completely minimalistic, it’s also amazingly powerful.  Spanning more than 20 years of her career, the Cannes screening reduced her to tears as the credits rolled, as her gestures, movements, and facial expressions are simply unforgettable, even through an N95 mask at the end of the film that covers most of her face, arguably the only actress seen so far who has been able to transcend those limitations, offering what is perhaps the performance of her lifetime, something completely missed by the Cannes jury.  Unexpected events crop up one after another, yet she carries the picture as she wanders through different time periods in this sprawling yet ruminative journey haunted by history, kind of a reflection on the director's work, yet realized through her eyes.  What we quickly understand is that as the landscape changes so quickly, feelings change as well, creating a roller-coaster social environment which can leave us with an overwhelming sense of melancholy at having survived such a momentous ordeal, which is exactly what Jia’s films are about, where time, distance, and memories are intertwined, always wondering how we can find the truth from the fictionality of the film, offering a deep sense of loneliness, nostalgia, and disillusionment, leaving a profound imprint in the viewer’s imaginations.

Opening on the side of the road, an unnamed man stands before a burning fire as a punk song from the early 2000’s rages, Underground (though the literal translation is Wildfire), by Brain Failure, 野火 YouTube (46 seconds).  Literally immersed in the Jia ethos that connects all his films together, this quickly segues to local women huddled around a stove singing love songs and workers’ traditional songs on International Women’s Day, while a sequence in the deteriorated Workers’ Cultural Palace signals the abandonment of Mao Zedong-era Communist traditions, though it remains a welcoming place for pensioners who no longer know what to do with their time, expressing a longing for nostalgia, bringing back collective memories in a film that finds a unique balance between documentary and fiction.  Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) and Guo Bin (Li Zhubin) are the same names of the couple in Ash Is Purest White (Jiang hu er nv), though they are originally connected back to UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002) where the characters first appeared, a jarring film shot in just 19 days that captures a new generation of Chinese youth, kids who had grown up completely in the post-Cultural Revolution era when China was rapidly modernizing, and, to some extent, Westernizing, while Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (2006) continues the story of those left behind by a rapidly transforming Chinese society.  Jia and his co-writer Wan Jiahuan, who also collaborated on 2020 Top Ten List #8 Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Yi zhi you dao hai shui bian lan), have stitched together a new story set in four different time periods, 2001, 2006, 2017, and then 2022, which is only possible because Zhao Tao has starred in almost all his films, while four also feature Li Zhubin.  Living together in the northern Chinese city of Datong in 2001, known as a coal mining city, she is a singer, dancer, model, and club girl working for her manager and romantic partner Bin, often in front of the miners who still have their faces caked in coal dust, singing operas, pop songs, and performing choreographed dances.  Like the abstract opening dance sequence of David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), Mulholland Drive (2001) - Opening dance number YouTube (1:30), Jia similarly composes an ode to physicality in which songs of different styles overlap, with overcrowded nightclubs bathed in music from the West, where the collection of bodies establishes a dialogue with life through the playful and liberating experience of the dance, viewed as an exercise of freedom.  Capturing the exuberance of the singing crowds, there’s a kind of underplayed aspect to the overall performances, which rarely feel spontaneous, yet Qiao Qiao is completely captivating, as if lost in her own world, feeding off the frenetic energy of the music, providing some semblance of entertainment in a working class town bereft of any kind of meaningful cultural identity, 風流一代| 個瞬間似乎既是往昔重現也是過去不再可及的黯然 ... YouTube (6:07). 

Offering a sense of vibrancy in otherwise dreary and lonely landscapes, these sequences arouse the hopes and dreams of youth facing the harsh realities of capitalism during the approaching millennium, while also providing insight into small town culture and what this means to them.  When a bunch of rebellious punks surround Qiao Qiao on the street with their motorbikes, she easily dissipates their threatening harassment by more than holding her own, walking away unscathed while they’re left scratching their heads in complete surprise.  But their fragile relationship turns cold, growing miserable and oppressive, alternating between fleeting encounters and painful separations, best exemplified by an unforgettable scene inside a bus, playing out in its entirety from UNKNOWN PLEASURES, where Bin repeatedly pushes her back, like a dozen times, blocking her attempt to escape out the door, yet she persists until he finally allows her to pass.  Growing increasingly frustrated, Bin sets off to earn a living in a distant province, sending her a text that he’ll send for her once he’s settled, but she never hears from him, as he ignores all her messages.  One thing that stands out in Jia’s early films is his use of diegetic sound designs that allow the noise of everyday life to effectively act as a score, while he also gets compelling performances from non-professional actors, which add an element of hyper-realistic exhilaration.  Jia, one of the most uncompromising and influential filmmakers of his generation, founder of the Pingyao International Film Festival in 2017 to promote diversity of Chinese cinema (The Other Side of Hope: Jia Zhangke and the Pingyao ...), while supporting younger filmmakers through his production company Xstream Pictures, is able to remix old footage into this new film to create an epic adventure story by following a lone woman making her way through the ever-shifting tides of time.  The music is from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Taiwanese musical composer Lim Giong, who already worked with Jia in THE WORLD (2004), Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (2006) and 2013 Top Ten List #3 A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding), providing a window into the lives of the characters, where this is easily Jia’s most musical film yet, becoming the emotional heart and soul of the picture, exuding an air of post-millennial optimism.  His electronic music brings a poetic and melancholic tone to the film’s journey, yet there are also 19 different songs from various Chinese rock groups from different periods, none better or more poetically evocative than Omnipotent Youth Society - Kill the One from Shijiazhuang YouTube (5:44), used in a gorgeous musical interlude while panning the streets of Datong that depicts the dull and despairing life of workers in a state-owned factory in an inland industrial city, which represents an aftermath to the hope that took place after the Great Economic Reforms of the 80’s and 90’s (Reform and opening up), where the working class shouldered much of the responsibility of advancing social development, yet rampant unemployment from an economic downturn left those dreams a distant memory. 

Confused by his sudden disappearance, Qiao Qiao sets off in search for Bin, a particularly elusive figure, suddenly finding herself traveling down the Yangtze River, wandering through Fengjie’s eerily half-demolished communities that are about to be submerged by water and disappear altogether, along with a dozen other cities, where more than a million residents are being displaced by the massive construction project of the Three Gorges Dam, taking more than a decade to build, which was the subject of Jia’s astonishing earlier film Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (2006).  The film lingers here the longest, feeling more like a throwback to an Antonioni film, whose camera endlessly followed Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti through an alienating modernity, as Qiao Qiao similarly wanders endlessly, like a phantom, through the demolished buildings that resemble the ruins of a war zone, where the impact is simply staggering.  Jia alters the rhythm and perspective from his earlier films through Qiao Qiao’s silence, interjecting new footage, where she is an observer of pivotal moments in history, feeling almost like a time traveler, where the breadth of the experience is hard to fathom, with music holding a key to the past, unlocking memories, where the lyrics can reflect the inner life of the characters, becoming a profoundly affecting montage that serves as a time capsule, yet that breakneck speed of rapid development, technological advancement, and economic progress comes with a price, as the country’s traditional identity also seems doomed to disappear.  We learn that Bin has been involved in shady real estate business dealings, where gangs of kids are sent to fight other gangs, while he’s also dating a corrupt politician who quickly exits the vicinity with stolen cash before authorities can make an arrest, so as quickly as she finds him, she leaves him, as he’s no longer the man she’s been searching for, with a mysterious fortune teller offering his assessment, CAUGHT BY THE TIDES Clip | TIFF 2024 YouTube (1:25).  Returning back to the slower rhythm of life in Datong, the film jumps ahead to the Covid pandemic years in China, with the appearance of masks and disinfectants, along with empty streets and sterile interiors, the only section of the film shot with original footage by Éric Gautier, where there is a stunning dance sequence of masked partners who try to ignore the presence of a man who is literally spraying the floor with disinfectant as they dance around him.  A much older Qiao Qiao is seen working as a cashier in a supermarket, where she has two mysterious interactions, one coming face-to-face with Bin as their paths cross again purely by chance when he arrives at her cash register, recognizing him even with his mask on, but he lowers it without uttering a word, apparently in diminished health, as he walks with an assisting device. 

The other is with a robot friend that greets entrants to the supermarket, programmed with artificial intelligence to read faces while spouting quotes from Western authors in an attempt to make people feel better about themselves, where she plays a game of hide and seek, in and out of its sight of vision, each time challenging its reaction.  Robots are everywhere in China, seen in hotels, public offices, shopping malls, where they clean floors, deliver meals, or just provide helpful information, where it’s hard to assess how much lives are already changing by the effects of artificial intelligence or the diffusion of TikTok recordings in the changing landscape, a time when technological developments and the rise of influencer culture usher in what feels like an unwanted modernization, as it’s become a short attention span world that doesn’t give a damn about history anymore unless they happened to view it on TikTok.  Outside the supermarket a band is performing, with the couple reuniting again as a song plays Exactly The Same by Wu Tiao Ren, 五条人- 一模一样（《风流一代》 YouTube (2:10), which is about a pair of lovers meeting and parting over four different seasons, which perfectly resonates with what the characters are experiencing, as their relationship mirrors the isolation and loneliness of the pandemic.  Following his characters from Northern to Southern China and back again, the unexpected finale is uniquely powerful and poetic, with a song playing over the end credits that was released in the early stages of the pandemic, Go On, by Cui Jian, Ji Xu YouTube (6:12), a popular rock musician who resonated with the student movement in 1989 (1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre), where the song is given an anthem-like quality that suggests a sense of unfulfilled aspiration.  Jia used cameras that gradually emerged over time to reflect the differing time periods, where the digital formats ranged from mini DV to surveillance cameras and VHS footage all mixed together on 16mm and 35mm, as grainy, low-grade digital video gives way to a high-definition crispness, becoming a meditation on the flow of time, a collective expression of hope and grief in a changing China, as the world has completely changed since the making of UNKNOWN PLEASURES in 2002, something Jia recognizes all too well in our increasingly bewildering present.  He has been exploring economic and social changes in contemporary China for decades, focusing on how these changes affect ordinary people, especially how large-scale policies and changes affect individual lives, notably marginalized or voiceless characters, as this artist, more than anyone else, illuminates the inner lives of these citizens.  Jia wants to look back to a time when the future was completely unknown to us, and then pair them with images of today, which back then was considered the future, offering a different perspective that uniquely navigates contemporary China while documenting the complexity of the individual experiences who bear witness to the turbulent emotional and social changes.