Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World · reception & legacy
2023 · Radu Jude
How Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It stormed out of Locarno 2023 (Special Jury Prize) already tagged a masterpiece, then topped a pile of 2024 year-end critics' lists — less a reappraisal arc than an instant coronation, with 'best film of the 2020s so far' claims attaching to it almost immediately.
What's debated
The eternal Radu Jude split: is its 163 minutes of abrasive, deliberately 'ugly' provocation exhilarating or exhausting — brilliant vulgarity or an endurance test critics graded on a curve?
Its footprint
Bobiță — the bald, unibrowed TikTok-filter alter ego parodying Andrew Tate — became the film's meme-ready calling card, and the Stanisław Jerzy Lec aphorism of a title gets endlessly borrowed as a caption for late-capitalist burnout.
Where it stands
A certified Letterboxd cinephile favourite and rapid canon climber — the consensus 'you must see this' entry point for Jude and a fixture of best-of-the-decade lists in progress.
Named by the director
Influences Radu Jude has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Angela Moves On (1981) — Jude built the film in explicit dialogue with Lucian Bratu's Ceaușescu-era drama about a Bucharest taxi driver, intercutting its footage and bringing back its star, Dorina Lazăr.
- Jean-Luc Godard — Jude has repeatedly named Godard his lodestar in interviews around this film, which openly nods to the director's then-recent death.