About the director

Radu Jude, born in Bucharest in 1977, is probably the most important voice in Romanian cinema today. Since the start of his career twenty years ago, the busy director has realised over 30 short and feature-length films, winning awards at film festivals around the world. He is now a regular guest at the Berlinale, where he received the Silver Bear for Best Director for his film Afterim! in 2015. Six years later, he won the Golden Bear for Best Film for his unusual comedy Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and was part of the international jury in 2023. His next feature film Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, shot in colour as well as black and white, was his most successful to date and won awards in Locarno and Hamburg, among others. For Kontinental ‘25, he was honoured with the prestigious Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in Berlin this year.

Press reviews

„Like all Radu Jude’s films, this [one] is both angry and ironic; nobody here, including the people sitting in the street cafes, averting their eyes from the beggars, is innocent. That includes us: As Ortolya tells her story over and over, we want her to somehow get over it, move on with her life [...].“ (Stephanie Bunbury für Deadline)

„Jude likes to make movies quick and dirty, as if his productions had a hard time keeping up with all the ideas racing through his head. His last two features were both ripped-from-the-headlines satires that felt fast, fresh and utterly contemporary, like they were shot on the fly. The same could be said for his latest morality tale, Kontinental ’25, which has more of a universal bent yet makes references to such hot-button topics as the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as Hungary’s despotic leader Viktor Orbán. [...] Jude has a lot to say here [and] as usual the director finds an intriguing way to say it. [...] There’s a didactic, Brechtian structure to the movie — Brecht is cited several times in the dialogue — in which Jude asks the viewer to question what the death of Ion [a homeless man] means in a society wracked by rampant capitalism, racist nationalism and religious extremism.“ (Jordan Mintzer für The Hollywood Reporter)