KONTINENTAL ’25
(director/writer: Radu Jude; cinematographer: Marius Panduru; editor: Catalin Cristutiu; music: Matei Teodorescu; cast: Eszter Tompa (Orsolya), Gabriel Spahiu (Ion), Adonis Tanța (Fred), Șerban Pavlu (Priest Serban), Oana Mardare (Dorina), Annamária Biluska (Orsolya’s mother), Ilinca Manolache (Irina); Runtime: 109; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Alexandru Teodorescu, Rodrigo Teixeira; Saga Film; 2025-Romania/Switzerland/Luxembourg/Brazil/UK-in Romanian, Hungarian, German, with English subtitles)
“I respected the film for keeping things caustically real.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Prolific Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude (“Do Not Expect too Much from the End of the World”/”Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”) helms a scornful polemical social satire on the plight of modern-day Europe. The film is inspired by Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51 (1951), which featured a guilt-ridden Ingrid Bergman, the cold wife of an industrialist, looking to find peace of mind in a messed-up world.
Kontinental ’25 was shot on an iPhone.
The film is set in Romania’s gentrified touristy city of Cluj, the capital of Transylvania.
Jude points out how the poor are kept down by the unfairness of the capitalist system, a perverse post-socialist economy, and its racist attitude. Jude compares how divisive things are in Cluj–that the poor live in shoddy public housing, while the rich live in luxury houses on gated private estates.
Eszter Tompa plays the well-meaning innocent Orsolya, a middle-aged, Hungarian-born, upper-middle-class married woman with two kids. She’s a former law professor who lost her job and now works as a lowly municipal bailiff. She evicts tenants for greedy landlords, scheming real-estate developers, or for her government bosses. On one assignment she is asked to evict a homeless, depressed man, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu), living as a squatter in the dank basement of an apartment building bought by a German property firm, who will knock the building down and replace it with a luxury boutique hotel called the Kontinental.
Ion was a Romanian former Olympic athlete who is going through hard times. The patriot is so affected by his eviction that he hangs himself rather than vacate. As an ethnic Hungarian, Orsolya expects to be abused in the right-wing press for having driven one of their own to his horrible death.
The shaken Orsolya stays home to reflect on her life while her husband and 2 children go on a holiday to Greece. While experiencing a midlife crisis, she is confronted by acquaintances on the street–such as Irina (Ilinca Manolache), a sympathetic former student, and by a smug priest (Șerban Pavlu), who says sin is part of human nature and everyone will be forgiven who accepts Jesus as their savior. Her old friends pretend to care about all the suffering around them, but in reality could care less.
On a home visit, Orsolya’s elderly mother (Annamária Biluskabout) expresses how much she admires Hungary’s right-wing president, Viktor Orban, as the daughter fires back that he’s a fascist. Mom then calls her a whore, and asks her to leave.
We observe a Romanian society where the people are selfish and do not care if others are suffering.
I respected the film for keeping things caustically real, as it sets out to prove no one in this region is innocent.
It played at the Berlin Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 2/26/2025 GRADE: B
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