Writer/director Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 begins with Ion (Gabriel Spahiu). An unhoused former athlete, Jude’s camera follows Ion washing up in a park surrounded by animatronic dinosaurs. From there, he traipses through various worn-down locales in a series of unblinking wide shots. He also inquires of outdoor diners at an eatery if they have any work for him. Sometimes, he’s just silently walking across the frame. The lives on street corners so many evade witnessing now fill the entire screen. That visual dominance includes Ion returning to his temporary home in an apartment’s basement.

However, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) promptly shows up with masked guards to escort Ion off the premises. She’s evicting this man largely so the building’s owners can begin decimating the domicile for a snazzy new hotel. Ion, who has nowhere else to go, is reluctant to leave and requests just a few minutes to pack up his items. Orsolya complies with this plea only to shortly return and discover Ion’s corpse. He’s hung himself rather than enduring untold post-eviction hardships. Now, this woman’s racked with guilt and grappling with her complicity in this grisly outcome.

Jude’s Kontinental ’25 continues the filmmaker’s fixation on films unflinchingly chronicling the world as a modern Hell. His 2024 feature Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World was one of the year’s greatest triumphs, a dark comedy gem exploring late-stage capitalism’s dehumanizing tendrils slithering into every corner of life. Not even graveyards can escape looming billboards imploring visitors to buy something. 2018’s I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, meanwhile, reckoned with people’s willingness to accept hagiographic visions of historical monsters rather than accept messy, brutal reality. Existence and societies most challenging concepts are the cornerstones of Jude’s work.

Kontinental ’25 is not as masterful as Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. However, just because an Avril Lavigne tune isn’t as extraordinary as “Girlfriend” doesn’t mean it isn’t worth listening to. Similarly, Jude’s newest dark comedy still has plenty of insightful commentary and bleak gags worth seeing. That material manifest through a script adhering to hangout movie norms. Much of this script focuses on people lingering on benches or slurping on booze in a park while chatting about life’s challenges. These laidback vibes quietly reinforce how often we all go about our normal lives while the unspeakable transpires. Impactful wars or even a corpse aren’t enough to disrupt our mundane existences.

This chillaxed atmosphere combined with the intentionally static, non-sensationalized camerawork also works accentuating how much dehumanizing rhetoric manifests in everyday conversations. Orsolya constantly encounters people who nonchalantly refer to Ion as “an idiot” or a “criminal”. Even a priest chastises Ion for “taking his life into his own hands.” No dramatic music cues or severe camera moves underpin these horrendous comments. They’re often just a piece of larger conversational tapestries. With these elements, Jude is grimly suggesting how degradation is caked into “ordinary” conversations. Maybe it isn’t so surprising that people compartmentalize anguish in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, etc. when they so easily dehumanize folks in their own city.

Orsolya’s exploits searching for ways to soothe her guilt function as a microcosm of how human beings generally ease their tormented souls. Despite not going to church in ages, she seeks out counsel from a priest. She engages in fleeting sex to numb her internal pain. There’s even a moment she refuses to meet a sickly unhoused boy. She will, though, Zelle her friend money for the youngster. Orsolya isn’t an evil person. However, she still engages in ill-advised and often self-serving solutions to her guilt over Ion’s suicide. This jagged messiness is both incredibly authentic and a great vessel for dark comedy.

Orsolya’s sexual rendezvous, for instance, taking place in the background of a shot whose foreground is dominated by a backpack with a neon “I AM ROMANIAN” sign on it is grimly hysterical. Similarly hilarious is a later scene where a priest tries exuding a commanding presence around Orsolya in a park. However, some kid’s robotic car keeps slamming into the priest’s foot. “Please stop that,” he yells before immediately returning to his conversation. Watching this religious figure interrupt his soft-spoken contemplations with howls at some rambunctious youngster just off-screen is hilarious.

Framing this commotion in a wide shot amplifies its humorousness. Jude’s default expansive visual tendencies are as good for laughs as they are for inspiring thoughtful post-screen discussions. Granted, the lack of visual versatility compared to Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (which oscillated between colorized selfie videos to footage from a 1980s movie to monochromatic imagery of modern-day tedium) does ensure Kontinental ’25 isn’t peak Radu Jude. Intentional stagnancy reflecting Orsolya’s psychological rut does rob the proceedings of visual surprises.

Meanwhile, a delivery guy that Orsolya spends large chunks of Kontinental ’25’s final 30-ish minutes with isn’t quite as gripping as other characters like that priest or the lead character’s infuriatingly nationalistic mother. However, these gripes don’t diminish Radu Jude’s capacity for grim punchlines and subtly impactful social commentary. The latter arena manifests in the subtlest details, like an Instagram handle scribbled with chalk onto concrete steps located inside a park. Kontinental ’25’s opening sequence shows Ion walking past this social media promotion. Later, Orsolya traipses across those same steps in her drunken nighttime exploits.

Returning to that sight tacitly underscores these two characters’ existing in the same reality. Everyone around Orsolya keeps dehumanizing Ion to suggest he’s less than human. “He’s the not the same as you Orsolya, don’t worry about his death,” they’re implicitly reassuring her. Yet Kontinental ’25 depicting both characters stumbling past the same steps covered in social media promotion refutes that notion. They’re both humans. They both live in a world where promotional blitzkriegs invade every corner of existence. They’re both worthy of dignity. Only economic status differentiates them.

Radu Jude is one of the few modern filmmakers who could imbue so much commentary into fleetingly seen chalk-penned scribbles. While not the peak depiction of his artistic powers, Kontinental ’25 is still a frighteningly relevant exploration of societally normalized dehumanization. Best of all, its repeated references to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Orsolya is Hungarian) are now “dated” in the best way possible. Huzzah for the collapse of Orbán’s power and Jude continuing to weave strong movies.

Kontinental ’25 is now playing in select theaters.