19/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Radu Jude returns with another funny, anarchic film about guilt, systemic neglect and Romanian identity, this time all shot on an iPhone

Eszter Tompa in Kontinental '25

Roberto Rossellini’s Europa '51 was set in post-war Rome, yet aimed to capture the whole continent’s unsteady post-war existence; directly inspired by it both in title and thematics, Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] provocatively argues contemporary Cluj in Romania is a median example of today’s Europe overall. Very much in keeping with the Romanian auteur’s current major phase, commencing with 2018’s "I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the director further refines his caustic analysis of today’s world, whilst streamlining both his technical means (it was shot on an iPhone, with no augmented lighting), and focusing his screenplay on pared-down exchanges - an element which achieves varying, if engaging results. It premieres on the penultimate day of Berlinale’s competition. 

Kontinental ’25 is about the unprepared-for aftershocks of progress (largely of the capitalistic sort), and the tiny tremors that, when examined for long enough, can disrupt the blithe confidence and acceptance allowing the system to prosper. Ion (Gabriel Spahiu) is an ex-athlete who for some years has been subsisting as a vagrant in Cluj, Transylvania; refreshingly enough, his lifestyle of ambling around, boozing, publicly defecating and causing other various mild nuisances isn’t depicted with any false piety. But the modern city wants no remnants of its past, and the tenement in which he squats is scheduled for demolition; rejecting the relocation the local authority offers, he commits suicide, with Jude making us visually and aurally absorb this tragic act, eschewing an easy cut-away. 

Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), the bailiff overseeing Ion’s case, has a very convincing and realistic trauma response to this act; indeed, Tompa's powerfully externalised performance style makes it feel as though it were the first time she’s really confronted the cruel force of mortality (and significantly, her Hungarian mother, played by Annamária Biluska, is still alive, and exerts a domineering role in her life). Either way, the narrative guardrails feel uniquely poised at this instance for a Jude film, where it could be yet another arthouse example of bourgeois complacency and guilt, not far removed from Haneke or Farhadi; thankfully, Jude takes this common premise in a more novel direction, placing the variety that defined the visual style of his last features into his characters' very conversations, although this ironically makes them feel less realistic, coming out of the actors’ mouths. Seated together in Hong Sangsoo-like “two shot” compositions – the South Korean director (and Berlinale favourite) is a big current influence on Jude – Tompa and her scene partners resemble two university book shops having a conversation. 

Still, this vibrant discourse fizzes from the screen, enwrapping you in the duologues as a third figure – a listener. Another aspect making Jude especially contemporary is his classification as both a post-internet and post-truth filmmaker: comparing his digressive tangents to open browser tabs is too glib, but in 2025 and on this continent, it sometimes feels like you can’t verify anything, or come to definite conclusions in the old-fashioned way. The film’s ending, in light of Rossellini’s more emotive one, is highly telling: faced with a blizzard of contradicting yet tempting explanations for this horrible world, only one option seems palatable: holidaying with your family on a Greek beach, where you can vanquish it all from your tired mind, if only for a moment. 

Kontinental ’25 is a production by Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, the UK and Luxembourg, staged by Saga Film, in co-production with RT Features, Bord Cadre Films, Sovereign Films and Paul Thiltges Distributions. International sales are handled by Luxbox. 

Photogallery 20/02/2025: Berlinale 2025 - Kontinental '25

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Radu Jude, Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța
© 2024 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - dario-caruso.fr, @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso