QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN

The action takes place in Cluj Napoca, the fast-changing capital of Transylvania. The city is bursting with new developments. Even the neighbouring village of Floresti has been covered working-class people looking for spacious apartments. Yet you wouldn’t know this until the final part of this movie. Radu Jude leaves the establishing shots (which you would normally get as an introduction, in the beginning of the story) for the very final scene. And this is just one of the many movie conventios that this Romanian rebel filmmaker sets out to break.

Jude’s trademarks are all there. This include his disregard for balance and symmetry. The camerawork is wilfully inconsistent, with conversations framed from strange angles for no apparent reason. At times, it looks like the device is tilted. There is little to no artificial lighting and makeup. This austerity is an aesthetic choice, as the director wishes to achieve informality and spontaneity. Not coincidentally, the film title is a reference to Roberto Rosselini’s neorealist drama Europe ’51 (1952).

The formal simplicity isn’t the only similarity with the Italian classic from the 1950s. The two movies also have a related plot. While Europe ’51 features Ingrid Bergman mourning for her son’s death, Jude’s new creation explores the guilt with which teacher-turned-bayliff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) has to grapple after a homeless man commits suicide under her watch (just as he is about to be evicted from his latest squat). The poor guy hangs himself on the radiator, leaving the floor covered with bodily fluids of all sorts (or so we hear; the director spares us of such graphic representation).

Unlike Jude’s previous films Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) and Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World (2023), Kontinental ’25 is a very humanistic story, with profound political, ethical, moral and religious reflections. Plus, it’s almost entirely devoid of the absurdist humour associated with the 47-year-old director. In other words, it’s not as wild and loud as its predecessors. The only vaguely funny scene is in the opening of the film, as the homeless man interacts with dinosaur statues and a pet dog robot. This does not mean Kontinental ’25 is an ineffective film. The dialogues are very meaningful. There’s a lot to be enjoyed – and to think about – in here.

This is a movie about seeking comfort in order to cope with guilt. Despite not facing charges, Orsolya feels responsible for the man’s death, and she has to carry the heavy burden of her dark sentiments. She reaches out to several people. Firstly she goes to her ethnically Hungarian mum, who resents that Romania snatched Transylvania upon the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. Racism shows its ugly face: mum’s grudge prevents her from empathising with the suicide victim simply because he was ethnically Romanian. She then mingles with one of her former students, a young man roughly half her age. He does deliveries on his bike for a living, and his backpack is emblazoned with a large “I’m a Romanian”, so that sadistic and xenophobic drivers don’t mistake him for a Bangladeshi. He boasts that he “will fuck anyone even if they are from Mars, as long as they have a pussy”. He does offer sad Orsolya some emotional healing, but that only lasts as long as her orgasm in a public square. Finally, she talks to a sanctimonious orthodox priest. He too has little sympathy for the man because he perceives suicide as inexcusable, an act incompatible with Christian duties: “a human being does not have the divine right to decide either his birth or his demise”, he sums it up.

Putin, Stalin and Viktor Orban slip into the many conversations. An open-minded and progressive Orsolya uses geopolitics as a gauge of the attitude of those around her. She resents that Hungary did not stand up to Putin (Viktor Orban’s close associate) in the same way that the small nation stood up to the Russians in 1956. She seeks to rid her country and her heart from authoritarianism and callousness. Sadly, the racist and the complacent characters on her path offer little hope that this is achievable. Europe 2025 is a lot more reactionary than Europe 1951.

Kontinental ’25 just premiered in the Official Competition of the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. Jude won the Golden Bear (the event’s top prize) with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn four years ago.