Radu Jude’s Hungarian protagonist Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) lives near the historic Transylvanian city of Cluj, which is being overrun by tech-driven gentrification. Orsolya means well, really, but her job as a bailiff requires her to evict a homeless man occupying the boiler room of a building set to be turned into a luxury hotel. In the 20-minute window he’s given to gather his belongings, the man commits suicide; and naturally, Orsolya is plagued with guilt. Struggling to atone and desperate to process a crisis of conscience, she seeks out religion, sex, philanthropy, zen philosophy… But is it her fault if she was just doing her job? Is it possible to be absolved in a world that sustains us by making us complicit, even as we dogpaddle in the wastewaters of so-called progress?
Shot with iPhone cameras (because it’s what we deserve) over 10 days, Kontinental ’25 is more of a side project for the Romanian provocateur, whose other recent work operates on a more epic scale, but that doesn’t minimise any of the film’s impact. It’s a film that is firmly grounded in the geopolitical specificity of Cluj, exploring ethnic tensions, economic inequalities, legacies of totalitarianism, the brutality of capitalism and the destructiveness of real estate – yet it’s through this local context that Jude gets to dig deep into the contradictions of our globalised, neoliberal world as the all-pervasive cultural and moral rot continues to spread.