Sustainable Apocalypse

Abstract

Theessay explores Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) by Radu Jude as a cinematic reflection on systemic exhaustion, performative speech, and mediated subjectivities in contemporary Romania. Through the character of Angela, a production assistant turned viral TikTok persona, the film exposes the paradoxes of hyper-modern labor, the vacuity of digital self-expression, and the legacy of state violence in everyday infrastructures. Babos draws parallels between the present and the socialist past through intertextual references and formal layering, situating the film as a grotesque elegy for a futureless present in the global periphery.