There’s no room for Ion Glanetașu (former athlete, homeless alcoholic) and Fred Vasilescu (Glovo courier with a law degree) in pretty Florești, nope.
It could be said that Radu Jude has almost single-handedly lifted contemporary Romanian cinema off the middle-class couches where it had been forgotten by the (now old) New Romanian Cinema. In his most recent example, the director abandons the Bucharest car horn laced with curses from Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) in favor of a superior Cluj-style politeness, while also opting for a more sober story and execution – though with an even more pronounced punch to the gut.
In essence, Kontinental ’25 is Europe ’51 by Rossellini, in its realist-capitalist edition: like the bourgeois woman played by Ingrid Bergman, the judicial executor Orsolya (the excellent Eszter Tompa) witnesses a tragedy that sparks a kind of humanist epiphany. Except here, the guilt for the tragedy indirectly belongs to her – and the epiphany might just be “a phase.”
Because what else could Orsolya do, once the man she evicted from his already makeshift home has taken his own life (and in a disturbingly haunting manner, at that)? Cry, confess to her husband, her mother, her friend, a priest, her coworkers? Add another NGO to the list of monthly donations she makes directly through Vodafone? Give up her vacation to Greece as a form of mourning? Even if she did all those things, the systemic violence at the root of the problem would still remain. “Oh, what a world this is!”