When a homeless man is evicted from a basement somewhere in Cluj, Romania — his last refuge — he sees no other way out but to take his own life. Left behind is Orsolya, the bailiff who carried out the eviction. The film Kontinental ’25 picks up where other narratives typically end. Director and screenwriter Radu Jude, who won the Golden Bear unexpectedly at the 2021 Berlinale for his comedy Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, tells a complex story about guilt, moral disorientation, and the desperate need for validation. On October 9, at 20:00, the film will premiere at fsk in Kreuzberg. Quietly, without reproducing the classic perpetrator-victim narrative, Kontinental ’25 navigates the social and political fault lines of a society in transition: housing shortages, economic fragility in the post-Soviet reality, nationalist thinking, and, not least, the role of language as an invisible boundary defining status, belonging, and power.
Radu Jude and Eszter Tompa succeed in approaching these themes with absurd, precise humor. Formally, the storytelling recalls Rossellini’s Europa ’51, not only because of thematic parallels but also due to the deliberately simple, low-budget production. Orsolya’s attempts to find meaning and redemption through conversations, rituals, and self-examination repeatedly fail against an environment that leaves no room for empathy. Her moral relativism is uncomfortable precisely because it feels familiar. Jude has created a compelling film that offers no easy answers but observes closely, and it is this very attention to detail that makes it so moving.
Text: Laura Storfner / Credits: Grandfilm
fsk Kino, Segitzdamm 2, 10969 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Kontinental ’25, film premiere 09.10.2025 20h
The film will be screened from 09.10. at the following cinemas in Berlin: fsk, Filmrauschpalast, Il Kino, Kino Krokodil, Tilsiter Lichtspiele, and Wolf Kino.
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