One would be hard-pressed to identify a film director on the world stage who has done a better job of articulating our historical moment than Radu Jude. His films over the last several years have offered a laser-sharp analysis of such contemporary ills as Internet shaming culture (2021’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn), the mobilization of national culture for reactionary ends (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, 2018), and the unfortunate continuities between Soviet-era authoritarianism and its newer, free-market equivalent (Uppercase Print, 2020). His 2023 film Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World may be his crowning achievement, as Jude manages to successfully juggle several strands of our current malaise into a single, wholly satisfying film. In it, Jude skewers the hustle culture of the gig economy, the toxicity of the so-called “manosphere,” as well as the seemingly limitless capacity of private capital to reduce human life to a series of economic externalities. If there is one single theme that unites Jude’s vision, it’s that the concentration of power in the hands of oligarchs and elites has not only accelerated human immiseration, but has naturalized itself to such a degree that any other way of life is becoming unimaginable.
Jude’s newest film continues the exploration of power and misery, but on a decidedly smaller scale. Kontinental ’25 could be considered a character study in benevolent narcissism. Whereas his recent films have been state-of-the-world reports of a broadly based sort, the new film narrows its focus considerably. Instead of looking at the systems that oppress us, Kontinental ’25 examines a particular type of liberal personality that allows authoritarianism to take root in everyday life. Deeply concerned but reflexively self-exculpatory, this kind of individual sleeps soundly even as they contribute to the callousness of the state, because they are ultimately convinced that they did the best they could.
The first part of Kontinental ‘25 follows a homeless man named Ion (Gabriel Spahiu) as he wanders through the Transylvanian city of Cluj, picking up cans and asking passers-by if they have any work for him and, if not, could they spare a couple of lei for his troubles. In one particularly striking tableau, Ion is seen walking through a park filled with cheap animatronic dinosaurs. As they snarl and swipe at the air, Ion quietly trudges through collecting garbage. Eventually we learn that he has been squatting in a boiler room in a building slated for demolition. Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), a Hungarian immigrant who works as a city bailiff, arrives with three masked gendarmes to evict Ion. She has gotten delays on the eviction to allow Ion more time to relocate, but the leeway hasn’t helped the situation. Finally they give him an hour to collect his things, but when they return, they find that he has hanged himself.
The rest of Kontinental ’25 focuses on Orsolya as she grapples with the aftermath of this event. Her boss jokingly compares her to Oskar Schindler as she relentlessly questions herself. Could she have done more? Orsolya is so distraught that she begs out of a family vacation to Greece, seeking counsel with an old friend, her mother, and finally her priest. But as the film unfolds, we begin to notice a performative air to Orsolya’s guilt. With almost scripted regularity, she tells the story of Ion’s suicide, often using the exact same turns of phrase to recount the tale. “I know it sounds odd, hanging himself from the radiator,” she repeats. Perhaps most revealingly, Orsolya always absolves herself just as she expresses her feelings of responsibility. “I feel like I’m to blame, but of course I am not to blame from a legal standpoint.”
Jude is providing remarkable insight into the liberal psyche. We know Orsolya is a “good person,” because she tried to help Ion. And because she is a good Christian. And because unlike her mother (Annamária Biluska), Orsolya detests the “fascist” Viktor Orbán and his oppressive government. Jude makes it clear that Orsolya is not a uniquely bad person. She is a fairly average individual with a charitable attitude towards others. But what Kontinental ’25 makes astonishingly clear is that when a person, any person, finds their sense of identity threatened, they will most likely do whatever they can to seal over the rupture. Although Jude makes it clear that an entire sociological apparatus is in place to make this possible, the penultimate scene suggests that religion has a very special role to play in maintaining a frictionless status quo. Orsolya’s priest (Șerban Pavlu) responds to each of his parishioner’s moral entreaties with a rapid-fire citation of a bible verse. It’s a bit like listening to Ben Shapiro debate a college student, because the more closely you listen, the less relevant his responses seem to be.
In addition to all of the above, Kontinental ’25 is a pleasure to look at. DP Marius Panduru (who shot Jude’s 2015 film Aferim!) employs crisp wide-angle cinematography that emphasizes the contrast between Cluj’s classical architecture and the hard primary colors of nascent capitalism. As with Jude’s other recent films, the landscape is of paramount importance here, and not just because a real estate deal is the precipitating cause of Orsolya’s dilemma. Kontinental ’25 subtly explores what philosopher Henri Lefebvre called “the right to the city,” the ways in which simply moving through space becomes a privilege afforded only to a select few when the category of “citizen” is replaced with that of “landowner.”
At this point, Radu Jude is working at the height of his artistic powers. In his analytic approach to the depiction of capitalism’s distorted realities, he provides a link between the present moment and the works of Godard’s 1966-69 hot streak: from Masculin Feminin to Le Gai Savoir. Compared with Jude’s last few films, Kontinental ’25 is a bit more accessible, with a clearer focus and a compelling (if compromised) central character. This film should be a breakthrough hit, although living as we do under the strange vicissitudes of late-late-capitalism, who’s to say?
Published as part of FIDMarseille 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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