Kontinental '25

2025 [ROMANIAN]

Action / Comedy / Drama

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 95% · 37 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 95%
IMDb Rating 6.8/10 10 1806 1.8K

suicide transylvania homelessness satire female protagonist guilt

720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
997.8 MB
1280*690
Romanian 2.0
NR
Subtitles
24 fps
1 hr 48 min
Seeds 12
1.81 GB
1920*1036
Romanian 2.0
NR
Subtitles
24 fps
1 hr 48 min
Seeds 50

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by lilianaoana 7 / 10

It's important to talk about this things, but the movie could have been better

Very political, very in your face, very Radu Jude.A woman suffering from a bad case of PTSD searches for comfort in the wrong places.Riddled with social commentary to the point of becoming a documentary of life in Cluj-Napoca, one of the biggest and wealthiest Romanian cities, an IT hub and currently even more expensive than the capital. Perfect example of the chasm between the wealthy and the poor, but also bubbling social tensions between Romanians and the Hungarian minority, a situation depicted at length through the lead character's experience.However, the treatment is very on the nose and so it doesn't hit as well as the director's other socially-aware movies. The dialogue is basically throwing ideas and issues and topics at us and although we do talk about this things on a regular basis here it feels a little too contrived.
Reviewed by dromasca 8 / 10

Radu Jude's films intentionally take their viewers, especially those in Romania, out of their comfort zone. Whether it's about national history, its repercussions in the present, or current events, the director and screenwriter place a mirror in front of the viewers in which they see themselves, those close to them, and those who surround them. Any mirror is a reflection of reality, but mirrors can also distort. They magnify some details, shrink or hide others, offering a processed image of the world in their field of vision. This is what happens with 'Kontinental '25', the film that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and is now starting its journey on screens in Romania. Through the title, Radu Jude ambitiously places his film, and perhaps not only this film, under the tutelage of Roberto Rossellini. The stars, aligned or misaligned, gave me the opportunity to be present at one of the first screenings today.Orsolya, the heroine of the film, is a bailiff in Cluj. The first scenes of the film do not show her, however, but Ion, a former athlete, who has become a ruin of a human being, a homeless and a beggar, rummaging through the city's garbage to fill his bags with recyclables from the sales of he barely survives. Orsolya, together with the gendarmes, executes an eviction order for Ion, an order postponed because she had already been benevolent and tried to help Ion in the past. Desperate, Ion asks for 20 minutes to arrange his affairs and commits suicide. Orsolya, although she is not at fault and the incident cannot have legal repercussions for her, feels guilty. In addition, Romanian nationalist circles in the press and on social networks try to create a diversion case out of this story. The event shakes the fragile balance of her world, already based on compromises. She is Hungarian and married to a Romanian officer. Her mother is a Hungarian nationalist, but she converted to Orthodoxy in order to integrate into her husband's family. She lives in a privileged area of the city undergoing spectacular development, but her profession puts her in contact with the most disadvantaged of the citizens left behind in neo-capitalist Romania. The film is a succession of dialogues between Orsolya and several people: a friend involved in social activities, her mother, a former student, her priest, in which the heroine tries to find peace and ease her conscience. Is there a real solution to these turmoils, or the only alternative is to retreat back into compromise?Screenwriter Radu Jude manages to catch in this story many of the contradictions that simmer under the spectacular development of the Transylvanian capital into a technological center and a modern European city: the traumas of history and nationalist resentments, the differences in social status and economic situation between those who have succeeded and those who were left behind by the system, an imperfect political and judicial apparatus. Film director Radu Jude alternates the fiction built through a succession of episodes captured by the Ozu-style fixed camera, with images of the Cluj of contrasts that recall his experimental films that explored the past based on archival photographs. The fictional part is supported by an excellent team of actors built around the main heroine played by Eszter Tompa. The combination works very well and the effect is assertive and disturbing, as the filmmaker intended. If it weren't like that, it wouldn't be a Radu Jude film.
Reviewed by politic1983 7 / 10

Human geography

Radu Jude's "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" (2021) has its blatant moments and its subtle moments - and it's these subtle moments that were its strength. "Kontinental '25" follows on from these stronger moments of social comment, focusing on changing cityscapes and how these changes affect those living within.Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) works as a bailiff in Cluj-Napoca, evicting people from their makeshift homes. Though ultimately a good soul, she struggles when an evictee pays the ultimate price for their poverty. As such, she decides against going on her family holiday, choosing to stay at home to figure things out for herself.What follows is a week of drinking, sex and lengthy and difficult conversations with people from her past and present on what feels a hopeless situation.Like much of Central and Eastern Europe over the last one-hundred-and-fifty years or so, Romania is a county that has gone through geographical and political changes. Orsolya serves as an example of this as an ethnic Hungarian - a sign of Transylvania's Austro-Hungarian past. She suffers xenophobic comments, in what is an ongoing and life-long struggle. Switching between Romanian and Hungarian, her mother (Annamaria Biluska) suggests she should move to Budapest for an easy life. A situation Orsolya knows will only result in the same problems.A former teacher, she also meets former student Fred (Adonis Tanta) who now works as a take away delivery boy. Well educated, he is proud of his Romanian heritage, advertising this fact to differentiate himself from Asian migrants in the same line of work. Their encounter ends with a trade of Romanian-Hungarian insults: he calling her a 'filthy Hungarian b*tch;' she calling him a 'peasant.' It is these kinds of exchanges that divide people who have lived alongside each of for over a century.Essentially, the film is a number of lengthy conversations shot in single takes on iPhones, as differences and economic struggle are discussed. Breaking up these conversations are shots of four eras of architecture, now juxtaposed in what has become a mish-mash of a city. Saxon churches and city walls sit next to Austro-Hungarian squares and town houses, opposite Soviet era tower blocks, across from modern apartments and offices compared to cheap Chinese flats.Chatting with friend Dorina (Oana Mardare), Cluj is referred to being more like Vienna and Budapest than Bucharest and southern Romanian cities. Romania and EU flags adorn many shots in a world where political and economic powers change the landscape around us. Alongside the heavy advertising spaces of "Bad Luck Banging..." Jude is as much a human geographer as filmmaker.You can tell this is filmed on an iPhone in places, where focus struggles for the odd second, though the film itself doesn't make this much of a problem, with the phone perhaps the most appropriate camera type for tourist-like shots of urban change.There is a wit in the dialogue to amuse, and the urban environment lends itself to some laughs as well. It lacks much of a conclusion, and Orsolya is a character where your sympathies can switch throughout. She has good intensions, but ultimately makes bad decisions, making her perhaps the perfect resident of the modern and changing world.As the title suggests, this is the face of much of Europe at this time. Rapid and generic changes make for homes that leave us confused as to our place and history, yet people will still choose to judge you by it.Politic1983.home.blog.
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