Kontinental ’25:
How to Evict Your Conscience
(and Other Romanian Pastimes)
It’s the unspoken buzzword of Kontinental ’25, Radu Jude’s latest cinematic séance, in which Romania’s eternal identity crisis meets late capitalism in a head-on collision — and capitalism wins, naturally, because it brought lawyers.
Our heroine, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa, saint of the slightly overworked), is a bailiff in Cluj — which, depending on who you ask, is either Transylvania or a state of mind.
She’s a Hungarian minority in a country that’s still unsure if it’s finished being a country.
Unfortunately, one of those dreams jumps out the window before the paperwork clears.
Cue guilt.
Infinite, renewable, performative guilt: the cleanest energy source known to modern Europe.
She tells her husband she’s considered suicide, but alas, she’s too busy apologizing to the media to go through with it. Everyone around her tells her she did nothing wrong. The police even compare her to Oskar Schindler, because in Romania, absolution now comes with a historical upgrade.
Like all Jude heroines, Orsolya is a tragicomic avatar of modern virtue: she wants to feel bad, but not so bad that it becomes inconvenient.
Each encounter she has — with a racist mother who loves her prime minister, a friend who wishes her local homeless man were “just gone already,” and a priest who treats confession like a customer loyalty program — only deepens the farce.
Every conversation ends the same way: “You’re legally fine.” Which, in the 21st century, is practically sainthood.
Jude, the prankster philosopher, populates Cluj with animatronic dinosaurs and robot dogs, because what better metaphor for gentrification than prehistoric capitalism coming back to life and barking at you?
His Romania looks like a socialist IKEA built on an ancient burial ground: you can buy a conscience in the “Values” section, but it’s sold out until next fiscal quarter.
Formally, Jude continues his tradition of shooting the apocalypse as an HR training video.
The dialogue feels improvised by people who’ve read too many Facebook debates about empathy, and the pacing suggests a Kafka story directed by Ken Loach.
The title, Kontinental ’25, nods to Rossellini’s Europa ’51, though here sainthood has been replaced by good PR.
Orsolya doesn’t redeem herself — she refreshes her image.
The world moves on, developers bulldoze, and everyone congratulates themselves for feeling slightly bad.
It’s guilt as performance art: postmodern, post-ethical, and fully monetized.
By the end, Orsolya’s breakdown feels less like spiritual reckoning and more like influencer burnout. She’s not confessing her sins. She's testing them.
His satire isn’t just aimed at Romania, but at the global middle class performing contrition between brunch and Netflix.
Kontinental ’25 isn’t a film so much as a mirror that apologizes for reflecting you.
Paris, October 12th
Giulia Dobre
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