‘Kontinental ’25’ Review: A Suicide in the New Europe

The image that opens this review captures, with unusual precision, one of the dialectical strategies Radu Jude deploys throughout his cinema—often to devastating effect. Within a single frame divided into two distinct visual planes, the Romanian filmmaker seems to tell two different stories at once. They contradict and complement each other, generating a typically ironic charge. In the foreground, something deeply dramatic unfolds; in the background, something patently absurd. It’s not a new device, but Jude has a gift for activating it at the least expected moments, sustaining a constant friction within his narratives. That friction extends beyond the imagery into the dialogue, where the dense collides with the banal, the philosophical with the anecdotal. It’s this system of tensions that powers Kontinental ’25, another of his abrasive yet darkly funny portraits of his country—and of contemporary Europe.

A loose riff on Europa ’51, clearly inspired by the classic by Roberto Rossellini (its poster appears in one scene, and the poster for Kontinental ’25 deliberately mirrors it), the film shares a similar starting point and moral axis. At its center is a woman whose life is radically unsettled after she witnesses a tragic event—one that shakes her profoundly and that, despite her involvement, she was powerless to prevent. Structurally, the film unfolds as a series of conversations in which the protagonist repeatedly recounts what happened and attempts to articulate her emotional turmoil to those around her, searching in vain for clarity or relief.

The story begins with a homeless man named Ion (Gabriel Spahiu) wandering through a dinosaur-themed amusement park and then through the streets of Cluj, the largest and most picturesque city in Transylvania—the storied region that for centuries belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary and is now part of Romania. Ion drifts through cafés and downtown streets asking for money, routinely ignored by diners and passersby alike. As he hauls his bags through the polished city center, Cluj appears fully gentrified, thoroughly “Europeanized”—a place that could just as easily be Berlin.

Real estate speculation proves central to the plot. Ion has been allowed to sleep in a basement during the winter, but the building is about to be demolished to make way for a boutique hotel. The person tasked with carrying out the eviction is Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), a Romanian teacher of Hungarian descent who supplements her income with this uncomfortable job. Accompanied by a group of gendarmes, she politely but firmly informs Ion that he must leave. He seems to accept, grudgingly, asking for twenty minutes to gather his belongings. While they wait outside, Ion takes his own life, shocking everyone—especially Orsolya, who finds herself unable to process what she has just witnessed.

She is consumed by guilt. Someone even mocks her tears, comparing her sarcastically to Oskar Schindler. What follows is a succession of encounters—with a friend, a former student, her mother, a local official, a priest, her partner—in which Orsolya retells the story again and again, modulating its emphasis, searching for some response that might help her feel less complicit, less lost. She is trying to understand her place in an increasingly indifferent world—one in which, whether she likes it or not, she is implicated.

As in all the films by the director of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Romania’s uneasy integration into Europe looms large, as do economic precarity, the lingering shadow of the communist era, tensions with Hungary (xenophobia is rampant, and Orsolya herself becomes a target), and the broader question of migration. Here, however, particular emphasis falls on real estate development—the way urban “progress” displaces those who cannot afford access to decent housing, not for lack of physical space but for lack of money.

Jude once again juxtaposes weighty historical considerations with TikTok videos, a viciously xenophobic rant with a trashy TV show playing in the background, theological debate with the most mundane exchanges. And there is always room for humor, arriving at the most improbable moments: the gendarmes singing “Staying Alive” to keep tempo while attempting to resuscitate Ion; a robotic dog harassing the bewildered man; Orsolya and her former student getting drunk and cracking inappropriate jokes in front of a monument to the heroes who resisted Ceaușescu.

Between discussions about donating to charities via multinational telecom companies, clips from the war in Ukraine, and criticisms of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary, the film tracks Orsolya’s increasingly desperate attempt to extract some form of existential comfort from her interlocutors. But neither biblical “mysteries,” nor the supposed wisdom of the Zen masters her student studies, nor copious amounts of alcohol, nor her abrasive mother offer any real solace. The “continent” Jude and his characters inhabit admits no easy answers. Good intentions—her own or anyone else’s—are not enough. While Orsolya spirals inward, Europe’s cranes continue their mechanical march, indifferent to whatever—and whoever—they leave discarded along the way.