The title may suggest an inward focus, but this gripping Romanian drama from Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days; Graduation) addresses social pressures that are wreaking havoc all over the world, including in Canada: globalization, immigration, xenophobia, and economic injustice are all part of the story’s thick stew, no matter that almost all the action is restricted to a small town in Transylvania.
Matthias (Marin Grigore) returns from his job in a German abattoir when he hears that his eight-year-old son has stopped speaking, spooked by something he has seen in the woods. Alienated from his wife, Matthias recommences a desultory affair with Csilla, who works at the town’s only business of note, a bread factory. Despite high local unemployment, the factory is unable to attract labour and is forced to bring in economic migrants from Sri Lanka. The townsfolk are horrified.
Mungiu charts these twin narratives with his customary dispassionate eye, an apparent objectivity that mirrors his characters’ terse civility, and which should absolutely not be taken at face value. The world is going to hell and Mungiu is taking the bull by the horns.
Marin Grigore, Judith State, Macrina Bârlădeanu, Orsolya Moldován, Andrei Finți
Romania/France
2022
In Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, French, and Sinhala with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Aardman Animation's handcrafted mix of dad jokes, slapstick, mock dramatics and understated emotion makes this return for the claymation odd couple a constant delight. The villainous Feathers McGraw is back to no good, commandeering Norbot the robot. Rated: G
My National Gallery, London
This is a lovely premise for a film. The Exhibition on Screen team look at the National Gallery in London through the eyes of the art lovers who pass through its doors, Each interviewee gets a few minutes to tell us about their favourite painting...
The Count of Monte Cristo
You can't beat this evergreen Alexandre Dumas tale for adventure, intrigue and romance. This lavish French blockbuster from the writers of the recent Three Musketeers movies pulls you in from the first scene and doesn't let off for the next three hours. Rated: PG
Flow
In this wordless and gorgeously atmospheric animated feature, a solitary black cat survives a tsunami and must confront his fear of water whilst sailing through a flooded world with a group of misfit animals. An enchanting adventure film for all ages. Rated: G
So Surreal: Behind the Masks
In the early 20th century many traditional Indigenous masks ended up in Europe, in museums and art collections, and, as this entertaining doc reveals, in the hands of surrealist artists like Max Ernst, André Breton, and Joan Miró...
Good One
This movie feels like a perfect short story. 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) gamely heads out on a camping weekend with her recently remarried dad (James LeGros) and his newly divorced buddy, Matt (Danny McCarthy). They bitch. She absorbs.
Credits
Executive Producer
Tudor Reu
Producer
Cristian Mungiu
Screenwriter
Cristian Mungiu
Cinematography
Tudor Vladimir Panduru
Editor
Mircea Olteanu
Production Design
Simona Pădurețu
Director
Cristian Mungiu
Cristian Mungiu is a Romanian filmmaker born in Iaşi, Romania, in 1968. His debut film, Occident, premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2002. His second feature, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), was awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes, and Best Film and Best Director at the European Film Awards. Mungiu returned to Cannes in 2009 as a writer-producer-director with the collective episodic film Tales From the Golden Age, and as a writer-director in 2012 with Beyond the Hills, for which he won Best Screenplay. He won Best Director at Cannes for his fifth feature, Graduation (2016).
Filmography: Occident (2002); 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007); Beyond the Hills (2012); Graduation (2016)