Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World: Radu Jude

An exhilarating wild, funny ride, writer-director Radu Jude’s latest black comedy centers on Angela (played with great charm by Ilinca Manolache) as she motors through Bucharest.

Angela is behind the wheel, interviewing badly injured people as potential cautionary tales for a workplace safety video that is commissioned by multinational corporation.

Grade: B+ (**** out of *****)

By night, her Neo-Nazi persona, a parody and a man named Bobita, is a TikTok misogyny and right-wing propaganda.

Angela’s day begins at 5:50 a.m. with the blaring of an alarm clock and a string of curses. Throughout her day, as she runs errands, Angela encounters a series of eccentric characters who offer a kaleidoscopic portrayal of life in Romania.

Angela’s primary task of conducting at-home castings for a corporate work-safety video leads her to interact with individuals from a diverse array of working-class backgrounds. This juxtaposes sharply with her interactions with

As Angela faces a chaotic world, world where capitalism and communism converge (or rather conflict, the movie touches on several of Romania dichotomies: past and present, East and the West, high culture and low culture.

A social chameleon, Angela navigates both the working-class homes and business offices with her ribald humor and aptitude for sharing trivia.

It’s a way to take out her frustrations at a job, where she persuades workplace injury victims to talk about the importance of wearing protective gear to avoid injuries, when the real problems are systemic poor working conditions and low pay.

The film has been described as a “tale of Cinema and Economics in Two Parts: overworked and underpaid, Angela drives around the city of Bucharest to film the casting for a ‘safety at work video’ commissioned by a multinational company.”

The film contains footage (put into slow motion or still frame) of Lucian Bratu’s 1981 film, “Angela merge mai departe,” about a female taxi driver in Bucharest.

Modern day Angela visits many of the locations of that 1981 film, and the shooting and content of her own Tiktok videos are also included.

The film’s second, shorter (and less interesting) section consists of the shooting of the safety promotion campaign video in the chosen employee’s factory.

With a running time of 163 minutes, the film, whose title comes from an aphorism by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, is Jude’s longest fiction feature so far, takes a more radical approach to both form and substance than in her previous outings.

While laden with local gags, the film also presents a broader commentary on the state of late capitalism and democracy, riddled with subversive elements.

While the film focuses on Romanian society, its resonance extends to Western culture as well in a meticulous narrative that captures the socio-political zeitgeist of latter-day capitalism, toying with increasing fascist currents.

The film is essentially a critique of how capitalism destroys many lives, and then forcing viewers to become complicit in the destruction of others.

It stars Ilinca Manolache in the lead, with solid supporting performances by Nina Hoss and Uwe Boll.

The film premiered at the main competition of the 2023 Locarno Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim, and a Special Jury Prize.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, which was later screened at the Toronto and New York Film Fests, was selected as Romanian entry in the Best International Feature Film category for the 96th Oscars.

Mubi had acquired rights of the film for the U.S,, and released it on May 4, 2024.

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