Orsolya is a bailiff in Cluj, the main city in Transylvania. One day she has to evict a homeless man from a cellar, an action with tragic consequences that triggers a moral crisis which Orsolya must weather as best she can.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.2/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.53/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 82
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
Radu Jude
Production
Saga Film, RT Features, Bord Cadre Films, Sovereign Films, Paul Thiltges Distributions
Cast
Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța, Oana Mardare, Șerban Pavlu, Annamária Biluska, Ilinca Manolache, Marius Damian, Adrian Sitaru, Vlad Semenescu, Marius Panduru, Dan Ursu, Cristiana Popescu, Matei Jude, Daniel Paleacu, Nicodim Ungureanu, Theodor Graur, Rácz Endre, Iulia Mureșan
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, low-budget moral satire that turns one bureaucratic eviction into a broader indictment of complicity, nationalism, and urban decay. It’s talky, acidic, and deliberately uncomfortable, but the film’s political bite and formal restraint make it one of Radu Jude’s most incisive recent works.
Best for
Viewers who like political satire with a bleak comic edge
Fans of morally thorny, dialogue-driven dramas
People interested in contemporary Eastern European cinema
Audiences who appreciate low-budget formal experimentation
Skip if
You want a warm, character-redemptive story
You prefer fast plotting or heavy visual polish
You’re not in the mood for bleak social criticism
You dislike movies built around extended conversations and discomfort
Overview
Kontinental '25 takes a seemingly small civic act and lets it metastasize into a portrait of guilt, class resentment, and public indifference. Radu Jude keeps the scale intimate while widening the target: bureaucracy, nationalism, liberal self-excuse, and the way cities erase the people who once lived in them. The result is funny in flashes, but mostly caustic and unsparing.
Worth noting
What makes it work is the tension between its modest setup and its larger moral reach. Orsolya is not written as a villain, which makes the film sting more; she is ordinary, compromised, and painfully recognizably human. The movie keeps asking how much responsibility a person can bear when the system itself is the crime.
Bottom line
Formally, it’s rough-edged and agile rather than polished, which suits the material. Jude uses that looseness to make the film feel urgent and alive, even when it’s frustrating on purpose. If you like cinema that argues with you, this is a strong watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
davidehrlich (3.5★) · 362 likes
There are any number of unique and memorable lines in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s characteristically stinging “Kontinental ’25,” but the most trenchant of them all is borrowed secondhand from Bertolt Brecht: “The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.” Cynically referring to the Trotskyists accused in the show trials that Stalin staged in Moscow as part of the Great Purge, Brecht’s comment is still debated in part because its degree of sincerity is so hard to parse.… more There are any number of unique and memorable lines in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s characteristically stinging “Kontinental ’25,” but the most trenchant of them all is borrowed secondhand from Bertolt Brecht: “The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.” Cynically referring to the Trotskyists accused in the show trials that Stalin staged in Moscow as part of the Great Purge, Brecht’s comment is still debated in part because its degree of sincerity is so hard to parse.… more
shookone (3.5★) · 205 likes
"the world is full of professors of idiocracy"
Jude - while shooting his Dracula film actually - comes around with a small political acidic low budgeter. a film that's all manic screenwriting with a couple of extended dialogue sequences and offensively zero fucks given technicalities.
very much what we know of him, very much what was expected, very much what we love as sprinkle in a lame competition year.
"we used to laugh about that - we used to"
Lorenzo Sartor (4★) · 189 likes
-Why are you filming?
-For evidence.
allain♡ · 184 likes
not perfect days catching a random ass stray 😭😭😭
Will Sloan · 181 likes
Whole world is evil, you're part of the evil, nothing will ever change, but if you want you can feel bad about it. Or not!
Was fun learning about different kinds of Eastern European prejudices.
2019 · Drama · 1h 41m · Curator 8.4/10 (48.7K ratings) · Where to watch: Kino Film Collection
A hard-edged critique of precarious labor and the human cost of systems that demand compliance.
Topics
political satire, moral crisis, Eastern European cinema, low-budget, social realism, black comedy, urban decay, bureaucracy, class conflict, humanist drama