At 46, Romanian writer and director, Radu Jude, stands as a rebel with a cause. Having won the Golden Bear at Berlinale 2021, the Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn director carved a niche for himself with a cinematic repertoire marked by audacity and unflinching social critique. His latest tour de force, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, is a testament to his prowess as a storyteller and provocateur.
Central to Jude’s latest masterpiece is Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache as Angela Răducanu, the lead character who embodies both the mundane and the extraordinary in her quest for meaning amidst the chaos of modern existence. Manolache infuses Angela with a cocktail of vulnerability and verve, serving up a performance that’s just as revolting as it is hilarious.
In Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Jude doesn’t just break the fourth wall, he pulverises it with a sledgehammer of social commentary. From corporate malpractice to existential angst, he tackles it all with the wit of a stand-up and the insight of a cultural critic.
Excerpts from an exclusive interview
The film served as a seething social commentary on toxic corporate culture, and Angela is at the centre of that narrative. How much of personal livid experiences in the industry informed your writing of Angela?
Radu: Well, there is quite a lot, because I started in cinema in these low-considered positions. But I think this didn’t change that much. Or maybe in some places it’s changed for the better, but not by much. But at one point, it was a very, very wild time for the Romanian economy, just a few years after the 1989 revolution, where the Communist dictatorship changed overnight into a market economy, in a very brutal and not “taking care of the workers or of the people” kind of way. Of course, I’m not complaining for myself or for the people working in the film industry who could make a living. But there were a lot of social classes which were basically abandoned by the Romanian state at the time.
Ilinca Manolache as Angela in a still from ‘Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World’
And of course, judging what we know about India, I think India has, in many ways, had even worse situations. So yeah, there is a deep personal element in the background of the film. But I want to emphasise that I’m not really interested in making autobiographical films. There are many autobiographical things here, as I said, but I chose them only because I found them important or symbolic for our reality today. I try to be less and less the kind of filmmaker that says, “I want to speak about myself or my problems”.
The juxtaposition of clips from Lucian Bratu’s ‘Angela Goes On’ with modern day Angela’s story for me, was a reading of the country’s evolution through a feminist lens. In your opinion, have things in Romania changed for the better or for the worse, in light of figures like Andrew Tate influencing its youth?
Ilinca: Well, I think something did change in a major way because we are free to express ourselves. We are not under dictatorship. So this is a big change and an important one. But the relationship of power between men and women didn’t change so much and the over-sexualization of women and the domination of women is widely spread over social media in modern society. So I think there is a change, through which we can denounce this dynamic of power. But the problem still exists and I think that Bobita was conceived through this idea.
Bobiţă is probably my favourite part about the film. Could you walk us through her conception and how she came to become such a vital part of the film?
Ilinca: It was during the pandemic and I think I created this toxic male character out of personal rage. In my personal life, I am very affected by this type of behaviour that men have with women. I wanted to criticise it somehow and put this type of content on my social media, so that the message can be spread and delivered to a bigger audience. I wasn’t so conscious that I was enraged by this, but somehow it was the trigger because I personally suffer in life with this behaviour.
Do you think the impact of satire is limited or confined by today’s socio-political culture?
Radu: I’m not denying that a film can make an impact on some people or change their lives. There’s a lot of advantages, I hope, that a film — even a modest film like ours — could bring. But creating real impact is a kind of absurdist hope for a film. Did Satyajit Ray’s movies change India? How could that be possible in such a country, when the forces involved are so huge? Or can you think of any German work of art before the Nazi times, or great Russian work of art before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
In my opinion, the question doesn’t have a positive answer. I mean, you can look at Gaza and all the horrors there. There were so many films or novels made by Palestinians or Israelis who are against occupation, yet nothing stopped the massacre on the 7th of October. And nothing stops the brutal, unnecessary response of Israel.
The film also serves as a cautionary tale of the power of the modern image and the distortion of reality. ‘Triangle of Sadness’ director Ruben Ostlund just called for cameras as a powerful tool to be licensed and regulated the same way arms and ammunition are. Would you agree with him?
Radu: Well, certainly not. I’ve read Ruben’s interview and I think he was joking. Actually, we lived in a society where cameras are regulated by the state. And a society like this is called dictatorship. But I think that if we go beyond Ruben Ostlund’s bad joke, maybe what’s important to talk about is the fact that images are in a certain way important — and images are dangerous — and this is why I think what is important is to have a kind of education (I don’t like the word) on how to understand images and the problems they pose.
An image is something very, very vague, but with a very concrete appearance. Many people — all of us actually — can be fooled very easily by images, and especially with the new changes in technology, which have been extremely fast. All these digital filters, like we used in the film, or these deepfakes or AI technology, changes everything in such a way that I think we need new intellectual tools to understand these new image realities. From this point of view, I’m totally, totally against the idea of regulating image recording, like in a dictatorship.
A still from ‘Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World’
During the film’s Zoom call sequence, Nina Hoss’s character says, “Respect the rules, because if you don’t, you’re f****d”. How much of that do you agree with in the context of your style of filmmaking?
Radu: (chuckles) It’s a perversion what you ask, because in the film, it was meant in a certain way and of course, you mean it in another. I can only answer this with a quote that you find in one of Godard’s films from the 80s, where there’s a film crew who tries to reproduce some paintings. At some point, a character turns to the camera behind, operated by Godard’s great DoP (cinematographer) Raoul Coutard, and asks, “Mr. Coutard, are there rules in cinema?” And Coutard says, “No, sir, there are no rules in cinema.”
Lastly, most of Angela’s playlist consisted primarily of Romanian turbo-folk hits... do you have any recommendations for us?
Ilinca: I have many, but one of the greatest Manele [turbo-folk] singers is Florin Salam; he’s a genius. Or even Adrian Copilu Minune, he’s one of the greatest Manele singers from the early 2000s. We have modern ones as well, like Bogdan de la Ploiești, for instance.
Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World premieres May 3 on MUBI
