Hot off the heels of being recently singled out and praised by Martin Scorsese, Radu Jude is set to premiere a new film on Wednesday at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s called “Kontinental ‘25.” A trailer has now been released.
Will Jude win his second Golden Bear at Berlin? The critics are surely on his side as his last film, the acclaimed “Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” was prominently featured in numerous “best of” critics polls including Sight & Sound, Cahiers du Cinema and Film Comment.
Jude has emerged as one of the more interesting international filmmakers of recent years. He won the coveted Golden Bear in 2021 for “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”; The win came six years after Jude earned the Silver Bear for the historical drama, “Aferim!”
According to Jude, “Kontinental ’25” tackles a woman’s crisis of conscience and was “filmed independently, low-budget, in Cluj and Florești,” It’s being described as “a moral dilemma post festum […] a modest attempt at dialogue with some themes from Rossellini’s Europa ’51.”
Jude is said to again use a mixture of drama, comedy, and relevant topics as diverse as the housing crisis, post-socialist economics, nationalism to tell his story. As with his last few films, expect sharp, absurdist satire, and a movie-literate narrative.
The Romanian filmmaker will actually be premiering TWO new films in 2025. With the already-mentioned “Kontinental ‘25,” there’s also his take on “Dracula,” which should be unveiled later this fall.