Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii) is a 2023 black 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 premiered at the main competition of the 2023 Locarno Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim, and the Special Jury Prize. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World was later screened at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and at the 2023 New York Film Festival. It was selected as Romanian entry in the Best International Feature Film category for the 96th Academy Awards on September 8, 2023.

Premise
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." 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) as well as Angela's own Tiktok videos. The second half of the film consists of the shooting of the safety promotion campaign video in front of the entrance to the chosen employee's factory.

Cast

 * Ilinca Manolache as Angela
 * Nina Hoss as Doris Goethe
 * Katia Pascariu
 * Sofia Nicolaescu
 * Uwe Boll as himself
 * László Miske
 * Ovidiu Pîrsan
 * Dorina Lazar
 * Alex M. Dascalu as Dan Trofăilă

Production
The title comes from an aphorism by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. The film is Jude's longest fiction film so far.

Release
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World premiered at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival on 4 August 2023, where it received the Special Jury Prize. It was also invited at the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 'Icon' section and was screened on 5 October 2023.

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. The film was released on Mubi on 4 May 2024.

The film was released theatrically in Romania on 27 October 2024.

Reception
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.". 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". The film also received very positive reviews in Indie Wire, Le Monde, D Movies, Screen Daily and Deadline, among others.

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.