Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Radu Jude's punk narrative follows a dangerously exhausted driver ironically tasked with casting a safety video.

Overworked, underpaid and heading towards a cliff of utter exhaustion, production assistant Angela is unsafely tasked with driving around Bucharest to cast a safety video for a multinational organisation.

Always on the go, Angela milks the day for every last drop of time. Her only spare moments are spent in character, posting clips under her fake persona Bobițǎ – a jarringly vulgar man spitting offensively hot takes at his TikTok followers.

Curator's note

Doing away with a more traditional modus operandi, Radu Jude embraces a punk narrative structure to turn what could be a simple character journey into a deeply engrossing cinema experience.

A central narrative is intercut with short form media including direct-to-camera social media posts and clips from a kitschy 1981 Romanian film about a female taxi driver on a her own similar journey. Jude's resulting film feeds the wider audience's growing appetite for short form media, albeit in a longer-than-normal-form frame.

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World was released at the 76th Locarno Film Festival.

– Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)