Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023)

There's something very natural about Ilinca Manolache in this gritty and occasionally quite funny story of "Angela". She seems to spend much of the film driving her car around the streets of Bucharest garnering interviews from the victims of industrial accidents. Why? Well apparently some Austrians are making a safety film and they want a real person to go on screen advocating the common sense of adhering to the rules! Don't go pole vaulting over a volcano kind of thing. As she becomes increasingly weary, being sent from one end of the city to the other, she encounters some of the more moronic road users and that allows the dialogue to get ripe and lively - much to the chagrin of her mother. Anyway, eventually she alights on one would-be contributor who seems quite happy to do whatever is ...

Some may find it discouraging to look upon the world with a robustly cynical outlook, yet, given prevailing conditions in the world today, it may sometimes be unavoidable, an attribute reflected in many contexts, including art and cinema. And that’s just what Romanian writer-director Radu Jude has done in his latest feature outing, a biting, darkly satirical comedy-drama that lays bare many of the everyday frustrations that his countrymen experience in areas like politics, corruption and economic opportunities. The film tells this story through the experiences of Angela Raducani (Ilinca Manolache), an overworked, underpaid, sleep-deprived movie production assistant as she struggles to make it through her daily work routine, an unappreciated effort not unlike that thrust upon many contemp...

Radu Jude's latest film is a caustic, unfiltered critique that slices through the veneer of contemporary work culture like a hot knife through butter. At its core, this is a merciless examination of late-stage capitalism and gig-working that will leave you simultaneously laughing and wincing.

The film's narrative follows Angela (played with raw, frenetic energy played by Ilinca Manolache), a delivery driver navigating the soul-crushing gig economy with all the excitement of a 5000-year old mummy. Her days are a blur of constant movement, endless deliveries, and bureaucratic absurdities that epitomize the modern workplace's most dehumanizing aspects. Jude brilliantly captures the exhaustion of workers trapped in a system that treats them as disposable resources rather than human beings.
...