New US Trailer for Radu Jude’s ‘Kontinental ’25’ Set in Transylvania
by Alex Billington
January 14, 2026
Source: YouTube
“You can’t help everyone. Life is full of unforeseen stuff.” 1-2 Special has revealed the full official US trailer for the wacky fun film Kontinental ’25 made by Romanian maestro filmmaker Radu Jude. This initially premiered at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival one year ago (trailer from then) and will be out to watch in select US theaters starting this March after a year wait. 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” film – about a wealthy woman who becomes obsessed with humanitarianism when her young son dies from suicide. In Radu Jude’s new 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. For die-hard cinephiles only. It’s very kooky & weird but Radu Jude is always on point with his commentary.
Here’s the official US trailer (+ poster) for Radu Jude’s film Kontinental ’25, from 1-2 Special’s 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 short films and unique documentaries. It’s produced by Alex Teodorescu and Rodrigo Teixeira. This originally premiered at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival one year ago and it also played at NYFF & London. 1-2 Special debuts Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 in select US theaters starting on March 27th, 2026. Want to watch?
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