Screen/Society--"Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World" (Radu Jude, 2023)

Film Screening: "Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World" (Radu Jude, 2023, 164 min, Romania, Romanian with English subtitles, DCP)As he proved with his scandalous, scathing political comedy "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn," Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude is among the most radical filmmakers working today and one of the few unafraid to diagnose the absurd evils and moral blind spots that make contemporary living what it-unfortunately-is. In his latest film, Jude again explodes conventional boundaries of narrative and form, this time charting a lacerating course through one day in the life of a severely overworked film production assistant, Angela, who drives around Bucharest on her latest gig: filming work accident victims auditioning to be in a safety equipment video for a German multinational corporation. At the same time, the sleep-deprived Angela upkeeps her own side project-a face-filtered, trash-talking, right-wing alter ego with more than 20,000 viewers that serves as the film's perverse Greek chorus. Intercutting all this with footage from Romanian director Lucian Bratu's feminist 1981 film "Angela Moves On," following the travels of a female cab driver around the city's same sights and locations, Jude initiates a conversation with his country's past and present, while engaging in a meta-commentary about the ability of the captured image to exploit, and to contort the truth. "Of the many things that make "Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World" exhilarating, from its egalitarian mix of high and low references to its delightful profanity, what stands out is its willingness to acknowledge the general horror of modern existence, and then to suggest the only reasonable response is to laugh." - Vulture "[Do Not Expect] feels like it has burst spontaneously from the global unconscious, a space where the real and the virtual mingle with increasing consent... [It is a] freewheeling, unpredictable movie that reminds us that, while hope for humanity's future may be futile, it's still worth expecting something from cinema." - Cinemascope "[Do Not Expect] aggressively interrogates the distinction between documentary and fiction-or, to put it more directly, the deceptive potential of recorded images... [The film confirms] Jude as one of the most idiosyncratic, uncompromising, and intellectually vigorous of living filmmakers." - Slant