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
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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)