Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Radu Jude’s follow-up to the Golden Bear-winning Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a pin-sharp, caustically funny critique of workplace culture and oppression.

Radu Jude’s delightfully digressive dark satire about the ills of modern life is one of the most remarkable movies of the last year. It follows Angela, an insanely overworked assistant working for a film company, as she drives around auditioning disabled people for a video dubiously promoting safety in the workplace; between encounters she posts bilious TikTok rants pretending to be Andrew Tate. Meanwhile, her wretched existence is contrasted with that of another Angela – a taxi-driver from a 1981 movie.

Scabrously funny, provocatively topical, unashamedly oddball and often inspired, Jude’s sprawling, crazed but surprisingly coherent comedy skewers both today’s Romania and the West in general. And the last quarter – a superb single take – speaks volumes about the unreliability of the moving image. Radically insightful entertainment.