Curator Watchlist
A sharp, low-budget moral satire that turns one bureaucratic eviction into a broader indictment of complicity, nationalism, and urban decay. It’s talky, acidic, and deliberately uncomfortable, but the film’s political bite and formal restraint make it one of Radu Jude’s most incisive recent works.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 1h 49m
Director: Radu Jude
Starring: Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța
Orsolya is a bailiff in Cluj, the main city in Transylvania. One day she has to evict a homeless man from a cellar, an action with tragic consequences that triggers a moral crisis which Orsolya must weather as best she can.
Radu Jude
Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța
A sharp, low-budget moral satire that turns one bureaucratic eviction into a broader indictment of complicity, nationalism, and urban decay. It’s talky, acidic, and deliberately uncomfortable, but the film’s political bite and formal restraint make it one of Radu Jude’s most incisive recent works.
Kontinental '25 takes a seemingly small civic act and lets it metastasize into a portrait of guilt, class resentment, and public indifference. Radu Jude keeps the scale intimate while widening the target: bureaucracy, nationalism, liberal self-excuse, and the way cities erase the people who once lived in them. The result is funny in flashes, but mostly caustic and unsparing.
What makes it work is the tension between its modest setup and its larger moral reach. Orsolya is not written as a villain, which makes the film sting more; she is ordinary, compromised, and painfully recognizably human. The movie keeps asking how much responsibility a person can bear when the system itself is the crime.
Formally, it’s rough-edged and agile rather than polished, which suits the material. Jude uses that looseness to make the film feel urgent and alive, even when it’s frustrating on purpose. If you like cinema that argues with you, this is a strong watch.
davidehrlich (3.5★) · 362 likes
There are any number of unique and memorable lines in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s characteristically stinging “Kontinental ’25,” but the most trenchant of them all is borrowed secondhand from Bertolt Brecht: “The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.” Cynically referring to the Trotskyists accused in the show trials that Stalin staged in Moscow as part of the Great Purge, Brecht’s comment is still debated in part because its degree of sincerity is so hard to parse.
shookone (3.5★) · 205 likes
"the world is full of professors of idiocracy" Jude - while shooting his Dracula film actually - comes around with a small political acidic low budgeter. a film that's all manic screenwriting with a couple of extended dialogue sequences and offensively zero fucks given technicalities. very much what we know of him, very much what was expected, very much what we love as sprinkle in a lame competition year. "we used to laugh about that - we used to"
Lorenzo Sartor (4★) · 189 likes
-Why are you filming? -For evidence.
allain♡ · 184 likes
not perfect days catching a random ass stray 😭😭😭
Will Sloan · 181 likes
Whole world is evil, you're part of the evil, nothing will ever change, but if you want you can feel bad about it. Or not! Was fun learning about different kinds of Eastern European prejudices.
Another Radu Jude film that mixes historical critique, dark humor, and sharp social observation.
Shares Jude’s abrasive wit, political anger, and interest in labor, media, and modern Romanian life.
A devastating Romanian social drama about institutions failing an ordinary person in real time.
Austere, tense Romanian realism that turns private distress into a larger social indictment.
A procedural built around conscience, language, and the pressure of systems on individual ethics.
A dense, talk-driven portrait of family, politics, and social unease in contemporary Romania.
A sly Romanian crime comedy that balances deadpan humor with institutional cynicism.
A biting European satire of work, alienation, and the absurdities of modern professional life.
Skewers liberal self-image and public morality through uncomfortable, concept-driven satire.
A moral-pressure chamber about self-preservation, shame, and the stories people tell themselves.
Political comedy that finds horror and absurdity in systems of power and collective cowardice.
Cold, observant social critique about repression, guilt, and the roots of cruelty in a community.
moral complicity, bureaucracy, guilt, housing insecurity, urban renewal, nationalism, xenophobia, class tension
political satire, moral crisis, Eastern European cinema, low-budget, social realism, black comedy, urban decay, bureaucracy, class conflict, humanist drama