Kontinental '25

Orsolya works as a bailiff in Cluj. A homeless man she evicts from a building kills himself shortly afterwards, and she cannot work out where to put the responsibility. The rest of the film is her going to everyone she knows, from her priest to her friends, looking for an explanation or some relief. Nobody gives her what she is after. Radu Jude shot it on an iPhone in about ten days. The result does not look crude. If anything the method lets him record Cluj exactly as it is, the hotel construction, the tourist signage, the emptied neighbourhoods. The title takes its cue from Rossellini's Europe 51. It played in the main competition at the seventy fifth Berlin film festival and won the Silver Bear for best screenplay. Its difficulty is formal. It advances through long conversations, very little happens, and some of the references close up for viewers who do not know Romania's housing crisis. The humour is cold too. Who it is for: viewers who like political and formal risk. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for narrative and resolution.