With a title like this, it was expected that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World would be critical of today’s current circumstances, but the film takes a more startling approach. Radu Jude’s longest narrative feature is a day in the life of a disgruntled, underpaid production assistant, and as she drives between interviewees injured from work accidents, the film alternates between the black-and-white, terribly mundane reality, her Tiktok-filtered satirical rants as Bobiță, and an old colored film of a Romania decades past. It’s a cynical depiction of how vulgar it is to be alive today, but it’s also more honest as Jude refuses to cling to the past.
"A glorious, poisonous, everything-in-the-pot treatise on the state of the world today."
— Mark Asch
"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."
— Alison Willmore
On behalf of a multinational company, a production assistant drives around the Romanian city of Bucharest, interviewing various citizens who have been injured due to work accidents to cast one of them in a “safety at work” video.
A production assistant drives around Bucharest to audition injured, former employees for a safety at work video.
We’ve seen films alternating between black and white and color, but in this case, today’s reality being black and white contrasted to the colored film of yesteryear really hits home how much society’s regressed.
Bobiță…
