Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Romanian: Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii) is a 2023 satirical[2]absurdist[3]dark comedy film written and directed by Radu Jude. It stars Ilinca Manolache with supporting performances by Nina Hoss and Uwe Boll. It is a co-production among Romania, Croatia, France and Luxembourg.
The film has been described as a "(t)ale of Cinema and Economics in Two Parts: overworked and underpaid, Angela drives around the city of Bucharest to film the casting for a 'safety at work video' commissioned by a multinational company."[9] This process mostly consists of interviewing injured workers in order to whitewash the company's involvement in their injuries, which one interviewee suddenly reveals. The frustrations of this job drive Angela to start broadcasting on Tiktok as an Andrew Tate-esque obnoxious and provocative male influencer, using a video filter to hide her identity. The film contains footage (sometimes put into slow motion or still frame) of a 1981 film about a female taxi driver in Bucharest (Angela merge mai departe, by Lucian Bratu). Modern day Angela visits many of the locations used in the 1981 film, and the shooting and content of her own videos are also included. The second, much shorter section of the film consists of the shooting of the safety promotion campaign video in front of the entrance to the chosen employee's factory.
Mubi had acquired all rights of the film for the US, as well as streaming rights in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, India, Turkey and Latin America.[14] The film was released on Mubi on 4 May 2024.
The film was released theatrically in Romania on 27 October 2023.[15]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 74 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "As unique and breathlessly expansive as its title, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World adds to the evidence supporting Radu Jude's status as a uniquely gifted and provocative filmmaker."[16] On the Metacritic website the movie has a score of 95 out of 100 indicating "universal acclaim" making it the highest reviewed movie of 2023.[17]
In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw described Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World as follows: "Freewheeling essay-movie-slash-black-comedy collage takes swipes from all angles at modern life.".[18] Matthew Joseph Jenner, writing for the International Cinephile Society, stated that the film is "a truly ambitious, beautifully complex, and deeply compelling masterpiece of purely playful postmodernism, which has never been more urgently required than it is at the present moment".[19] The film also received very positive reviews in Indie Wire,[20]Le Monde,[21] D Movies,[22]Screen Daily[23] and Deadline,[24] among others.[25][26]
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World was ranked seventh on Cahiers du Cinéma's top 10 films of 2023 list.[27]
