Kontinental '25 (Drama)
Director: Radu Jude
Producer: Rodrigo Teixeira,Alex Teodorescu
Screenwriter: Radu Jude
Cinematographer: Marius Panduru
Composer: Matei Teodorescu
Editor: Cătălin Cristuțiu
Production Designer: Andreea Popa
Costume Designer: Cireșica Cuciuc
Key Cast: Gabriel Spahiu,Adonis Tanța,Eszter Tompa
Do not expect too much from a system that continually fails those at the margins in this Silver Bear–winning firestorm from Romania’s most provocative filmmaker.
Amid a spiralling cost-of-living and housing crisis, Ion wanders the streets of Cluj – from a surreally abandoned animatronic dinosaur park to teeming hubs of tourism – scraping together the little he can to get by. When officious bailiff Orsolya, who thinks she’s the good cop to the armed gendarmes flanking her, shows up at the basement space Ion’s unofficially claimed as his meagre corner of the city and insists he move on, it leads to an all-too-avoidable tragedy. Badly shaken by the consequences of her actions, she seeks forgiveness; but it remains to be seen how deep Orsolya’s convictions are when it comes to effecting change – especially when she’s so easily distracted by former student Fred.
Shot guerrilla-style on an iPhone and riffing on Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist classic Europe ’51, this latest razor-sharp social commentary from ambitiously experimental filmmaker Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, MIFF 2021) was awarded a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2025 Berlinale. An unflinching dissection of the times we’re living in, Kontinental ’25 asks us to consider all the ways in which we’re passively and actively complicit, and what it might cost to do the right thing.
“Extraordinary … Atop its devastating human portraiture, Kontinental ’25 functions as a snapshot of a city as fragmented and anguished as Rossellini’s Rome.” – Variety