First Trailer for Radu Jude’s ‘Kontinental ’25’ New Twist on ‘Europe ’51’

First Trailer for Radu Jude’s ‘Kontinental ’25’ New Twist on ‘Europe ’51’

by Alex Billington
February 18, 2025
Source: YouTube

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” An early festival trailer has debuted for the novel film from acclaimed, eccentric, provocative Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude which is titled Kontinental ’25. The film is premiering tomorrow at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival (aka Berlinale) as part of the Main Competition section. The poster (also seen below) is a riff on the original poster for a film titled Europe ’51 (aka Europa ’51) directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Ingrid Bergman. Kontinental ’25 is described as a “twisted take on Rosellini’s Europe ’51” – which was about a wealthy woman who becomes obsessed with humanitarianism when her juvenile son dies from suicide. In Radu Jude’s novel take, Eszter Tompa stars as Orsolya, who is a a bailiff in Cluj, the main city in Transylvania. One day she must evict a homeless man who lives in the basement of a building. An unexpected event creates a moral crisis she tries to solve as best she can. The cast includes Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța, and Șerban Pavlu. This a quick trailer without much footage, but it’s enough to get the attention of cinephiles anxiously awaiting this novel Radu Jude joint. It’s his follow-up to last year’s favorite amongst critics Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

Here’s the festival promo trailer (+ first poster) for Radu Jude’s film Kontinental ’25, from YouTube:

Via Berlinale: “Cluj, Transylvania. After being driven from his shelter in a house cellar, a homeless man commits suicide. Orsolya, the bailiff who carried out the eviction, is impelled to make various attempts to address her feelings of guilt. Using a mixture of drama and comedy, topics as diverse as the housing crisis, post-socialist economics, nationalism and the power of language to maintain social status are dissected with a sharp, absurdist scalpel, in a movie-literate narrative that plays partly as a homage to Europa ’51 – not least in the modesty of this independent, low-budget production’s means. But while in Rossellini’s film a woman’s crisis of conscience leads to meaningful activity, here the protagonist facing the dilemma is unable to find anybody to understand her and becomes increasingly desperate for external reassurance and validation, in a manner that would be easy to condemn if Orsolya’s moral relativism were not such an uncomfortably accurate reflection of a modern-day malaise from which few of us are wholly immune.” 🇷🇴

Kontinental ’25 is written and directed by the acclaimed Romanian indie filmmaker Radu Jude, director of many indie films including The Happiest Girl in the World, A Film for Friends, Everybody in Our Family, Aferim!, Scarred Hearts, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World previously, plus tons of other brief films and unique documentaries. It’s produced by Alex Teodorescu and Rodrigo Teixeira. This is premiering at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival in the Main Competition this month. It will likely play at film festivals for the rest of the year. No final US release date has been set yet – stay tuned. First impression? Look any good?

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