The filmmaker behind *Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World* returns with another provocative look at the absurdity of modern life. This review was originally published during the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. 1-2 Special releases *Kontinental ’25* in theaters starting Friday, March 27, 2026.
There are countless unique and memorable lines in the characteristically biting *Kontinental ’25* by Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude; however, the most incisive of them all is a quote borrowed secondhand from Bertolt Brecht: "The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die." A cynical reference to the Trotskyists accused in the show trials Stalin orchestrated in Moscow as part of the Great Purge, Brecht’s comment remains a subject of debate—partly due to the difficulty in discerning his degree of sincerity.
Director: Radu Jude
Writer: Radu Jude
Stars: Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanta
Jude’s own provocations—including *Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn* and *Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World*—tend to wear their sentiments far more openly than most public figures could have afforded to do at the height of the Soviet Union; nevertheless, his oblique portraits of contemporary social ills prove simultaneously caustic and astute. Jude’s sympathies are as generous as his arguments are devastating, and the friction generated between these two forces has given rise to some of the only recent comedies that feel as complex and absurd as real life itself has become.
His latest film is, fittingly, another one of them.
Shot on an iPhone and utilizing the same technical crew Jude had already assembled for his upcoming epic on the Dracula myth, *Kontinental ’25* naturally feels like the—shaggy and scabrous—B-side to a larger-scale project centered on Transylvanian self-identity. Its moral dimensions prove more direct than those of Jude’s previous works (and its form, of a much simpler nature), but only because its practical applications are, in turn, far more intricate. While *Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn* and *Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World* contrasted the personal depravities of their characters against vast backdrops of systemic abuse, the much more intimate—and less clamorous—*Kontinental ’25* filters the perversity of neoliberalism through the eyes of a well-intentioned woman attempting to do the right thing. Unfortunately, a bold act of kindness can become a terrible burden to bear in a culture sustained by environmental cruelties.
The woman’s name is Orsolya (Eszter Tompa); she is a middle-aged, upper-middle-class bailiff who was born in Hungary before moving to the Romanian city of Cluj—currently in the throes of rapid gentrification—or at least to a suburb in the surrounding hills, where she lives with her husband and two children in the kind of house that, in all likelihood, displaced the local population through its cost and buried generations of personal history beneath concrete. Consciously or not, Orsolya has played an active role in this urban expansion; her job consists of evicting people from land that has been devoured by the government and/or by greedy real estate developers intent on transforming it into condominiums, chain stores, and luxury hotels. It is a task she attempts to perform with humanity—though a cynic might argue she does so only to be able to live with the fact that the work itself is inhumane.
Orsolya’s capacity for compartmentalization—which will soon be tested as never before—is mirrored in the bifurcated structure Jude constructs around her; a structure that opens with a completely different character, who will ultimately wish he had never crossed paths with the true protagonist of this story. In fact, Orsolya doesn’t enter the scene until we have spent about fifteen minutes following a homeless man (Gabriel Spahiu) who lives in the boiler room of the address that gives the film its title: an old apartment building slated for renovation to become a luxury hotel. Barely less prone to spitting than Denis Lavant’s Monsieur Merde—though equally hostile toward the modern world—the man shuffles along, muttering through a Cluj—“Oh, shit. Damn shit. Fucking shit”—so irredeemably commercialized that the streets are teeming with robot dogs and the paths on the city’s hillsides are strewn with animatronic dinosaurs.
Separated by intercalated shots of Cluj’s new and ahistorical architecture, these long, static confessional scenes are peppered with Jude’s biting—and instantly recognizable—wit; his dialogue proves just timely enough to distract from the sense that he is shooting at a target that is all too easy. *Kontinental ’25* is the first fictional feature film I have seen that names and responds to the Palestinian genocide—albeit only within the context of how Orsolya’s financial support for the people of Gaza and Ukraine (two euros a month to each!) complicates her own complicity in the suffering of the citizens of Romania itself. Her heart is in the right place, but what good does that do anyone other than herself?
It is only during the film’s final scenes—when Orsolya’s moral dilemma dissolves amidst some of her other shortcomings, and the reality of her powerlessness is laid bare to reveal the wreckage she leaves in her wake—that *Kontinental ’25* truly blossoms, becoming something a little more incisive and untamed. Jude is often at his best—his most mischievous—whenever his films take on a more explicitly metatextual bent; consequently, fans of the director should brace themselves for what is to come when Orsolya encounters a former student of hers—a young man obsessed with Zen *koans* and Ice-T—at a cinema-themed bar, with a poster for *We Live in Time* tacked to the wall behind them.
Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. 1-2 Special will release *Kontinental ’25* in theaters starting Friday, March 27, 2026.
Memorable one-liners abound in *Kontinental ’25*—the characteristically trenchant new film from Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude; However, the most incisive of all is a borrowed, secondhand quote from Bertolt Brecht: "The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die." A cynical reference to the Trotskyists accused in the show trials Stalin orchestrated in Moscow as part of the Great Purge, Brecht’s comment remains a subject of debate—partly due to the difficulty in discerning the degree of sincerity it contains.
Jude’s own provocations (including *Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn* and *Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World*) tend to display his sentiments far more openly than most public figures could have afforded to do at the height of the Soviet Union; yet, his oblique profiles of contemporary social ills prove simultaneously caustic and elusive. Jude’s sympathies are as generous as his arguments are forceful, and the friction generated between these forces has given rise to some of the only recent comedies that feel as complex and absurd as the very real life we have come to inhabit.
Shot on an iPhone and utilizing the same technical crew Jude had already assembled for his upcoming epic on the Dracula myth, *Kontinental ’25* naturally feels like the B-side—shaggy and scabrous—of a larger-scale project centered on Transylvanian self-identity. Its moral dimensions are more direct than those of Jude’s previous works (and its form, by nature, much simpler), but only because its practical applications prove, in turn, far more intricate. While *Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn* and *Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World* contrasted the personal depravities of their characters against the expansive backdrop of systemic abuse, the much more intimate—and less hilarious—*Kontinental ’25* filters the perversity of neoliberalism through the eyes of a well-intentioned woman trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, a bold act of kindness can become a terrible burden to bear in a culture sustained by environmental cruelties.
The woman’s name is Orsolya (Eszter Tompa); she is a middle-aged, upper-middle-class bailiff, born in Hungary before moving to the Romanian city of Cluj—currently in the throes of rapid gentrification—or at least to a suburb in the surrounding hills, where she lives with her husband and two children in the kind of house that, in all likelihood, priced out the local population and buried generations of personal history beneath asphalt. Whether conscious of it or not, Orsolya has played an active role in this urban growth; her job consists of evicting people from land that has been devoured by the government and/or by greedy real estate developers intent on turning it into condominiums, chain stores, and luxury hotels. It is a task she attempts to perform with humanity—though a cynic might argue she does so only to be able to live with the fact that the work itself is inhumane.
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