A moral-dilemma movie with a streak of black humor, Kontinental ’25 centers on a Romanian bailiff named Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) whose attempt to remove a squatter (Gabriel Spahiu) from a building scheduled to be torn down goes horribly awry. Kontinental ’25 paints a picture of housing inequalities in Romania (Orsolya lives in a middle-class suburban enclave where more and more apartment blocks are being built), while also exploring a deeply felt spiritual crisis, as Orsolya spends the second half of the film seeking absolution from friends, family, and her priest for her various acts of omission (both on the day in question and as a person living comfortably in a pitiless world). Oh, and there are nods here and there to the insidious nationalism bubbling beneath Romania’s surface. That’s a similarly wide net to the one writer-director Radu Jude cast in Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, which darkly, comically chronicled the failed promises of capitalism in Romania, especially for the younger generation. Kontinental ’25 has similar bursts of grimly absurdist humor—while walking through an animatronic dinosaur park, Orsolya pauses to say the Lord’s Prayer and is framed so that a roaring T. Rex towers over her head—but overall this is a more staid affair, anchored almost exclusively by fixed shots at medium distance. The movie captures the ironies and absurdities of a cruel, indifferent world, as well as the angst of those unable to muster the cruelty and indifference to guiltlessly glide through it. This is a tough time in history to have any sort of conscience.
(9/18/2026)
