KONTINENTAL ‘25
Radu Jude · 2025 · ROMANIA · 109 min
Get tickets at Film ForumIn his latest bold satire, Romanian auteur Radu Jude (BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN, DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD) takes up the spiritual crisis of educated urbanites—notching down (slightly) the absurdity, while complicating his interrogation of globalized modern life. Orsolya is a Hungarian immigrant and middle-class bureaucrat in the Romanian city of Cluj. Just after she evicts an elderly indigent man (Gabriel Spahiu, THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU) who was squatting in a building her agency sanctioned for conversion to a boutique hotel, he commits suicide. Plunged into moral crisis, Orsolya proceeds to obsess—via encounters with a friend, a former student, a priest, her mother—over her guilt. In a city where private investment drives government action and where religious conservatism deems suicide a great sin—who is the real villain? How can Orsolya—herself a victim of racism, staunch resister of her homeland’s fascism, generous donor to Ukrainian and Palestinian causes—possibly be accountable for the man’s life, and death? IN ROMANIAN, HUNGARIAN, AND GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES