‘Kontinental ’25’ Review: Radu Jude’s Homage to Rossellini Finds the Director at his Most Humanistic if a Bit Expected [B-] – Berlinale

To call Romanian director Radu Jude a diagnostician of our times would not be an overestimation. Moreso, his rich body of work resonates with audiences and festival juries across the world, showing how a ‘local’ or ‘national’ European cinema (his films are Romanian to the bone) doesn’t have to be hermetic and not only anglophone cinemas have the power to transcend borders. That said, Jude has never been the one to wave a finger, on the contrary, his films point at today’s socio-political ailments directly, but with humor and well-meant satire. (Towards those who deserve it of course; the director had no qualms to write “Fuck Putin and Trump” when signing his Berlinale portrait in the festival’s main venue.) Kontinental ‘25 is his return to the Berlinale Main Competition after he won the Golden Bear with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn in 2021.

As always, Jude draws inspiration from reality; for many of his films it can be said they take the form of a fictional documentary investigating a real situation. In the case of Kontinental ‘25, the idea for the plot originates from a news item the director came across a few years prior, concerning a homeless man who committed suicide upon his eviction from a squat, and a bailiff who was tasked with enacting it all. This is also the film’s plot summary in short, but there are plenty of details and detours that make it a delightful mix of socially-aware comedy and drama. 

For example, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), the bailiff, is a Hungarian who lives in Romania and faces discrimination, she tries to do the right thing, but is stuck with the immense feeling of guilt after the suicide; the reason for the eviction is of course, the housing crisis, but also the investors wanting to build a boutique hotel on site. All of this and much more happens in the city of Cluj, the second most-populous city in Romania. 

Not that it really matters that the film was shot on an iPhone, but cinematographer Marius Panduru’s attention to the cobblestone streets and squares of Cluj gives the film a slightly nostalgic feeling. The city is pretty, but Kontinental ‘25 doesn’t really beautify it; instead, it portrays a humorous snapshot of its many paradoxes. At the film’s beginning, we follow the homeless man (who apparently has been a celebrated athlete before falling off the wagon) through a forest-park, up a hill with a nice overview of the city, and later in the film, Orsolya takes the exact same path, unknowingly, in a completely different context. It’s worth mentioning that some of the film’s finest compositions feature the backdrop of Dino Park: think Persona, but one of them is an animatronic dinosaur. 

Kontinental ‘25 is also a homage to Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ‘51, where Ingrid Bergman’s character is torn by guilt over a tragic death that wasn’t really her responsibility. Similarly, Orsolya’s unease seeps into everything around her: family, workplace, friendships, even her sexual drive. Radu Jude never disregards the tragic potential of social issues, but his way of dealing with it usually exposes the comedy underneath it all as a coping mechanism. Not for the characters though, they are in way too deep already, but the audience has a chance to laugh and ponder on the systemic issues that led us there in the first place. 

That’s also why Jude’s themes and the renditions of those themes are universal. He is generous enough to the viewer to give them the whole spectrum of emotion and information, even that which remains inaccessible to the characters themselves: just like a Greek tragedy. In this sense, Jude is more traditional than one would initially assume, but his specifically honest way of prodding today’s moral relativism—both on screen and off—is what makes his provocations really meaningful in a vast sea of self-aggrandizing festival auteurism. While Kontinental ‘25 is sharp and funny and smart (basically everything one expects from a Radu Jude film), there’s a casualness to it that makes it seem less Golden Bear and more Jury Prize: most probably, he will be rewarded for his topical, yet sincere effort. 

Grade: B-

This review is from the 2025 Berlin Film Festival where Kontinental ‘25 had its world premiere. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.

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Savina Petkova

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