Mungiu, poster boy of Romania's New Wave film-makers
Cristian Mungiu, who won best screenplay prize at Cannes Sunday for "Beyond The Hills", is a part of a new wave of Romanian directors that emerged after the country's communist dictator was ousted. The 44-year-old won the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes in 2007 for the chilling abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", and his current film is based on a deadly exorcism in Romania. Mungiu is seen as a leading member of Romania's New Wave, which includes Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Catalin Mitulescu, and Andrei Ujica, whose works share an austere and often minimalist aesthetic. Many of their films are set in the 1980s and explore life under the brutal rule of Nicolae Ceausescu. Others examine the transition to free-market capitalism and democracy after Ceausescu was overthrown and executed in 1989. Mungiu said that in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", he aimed to capture the bleakness of late 1980s Romania and used the metaphor of lack of access to safe and legal abortion to depict the powerlessness of average citizens. The film left hardened critics at Cannes squirming at scenes in which a back-alley abortionist exacts a terrible price for two young women's budding sexuality. "Beyond the Hills", his fourth feature film, also looks at two young women bound by an intimate friendship who try to navigate in a hostile world with each other's support. It is based on a horrific 2005 case in which a young woman died after an Orthodox Church session in a remote monastery to rid her of purported demons. The film's two female leads, Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur, shared the Cannes best actress prize for their roles as best friends from an orphanage, one of whom has become a nun and the other who falls victim to the "exorcism". Mungiu said that while it was clear that the young woman was a victim, he was most interested in what people did in the name of love and good intentions. "My concern was to talk about something that matters. There are so many films today that are only concerned with entertaining," Mungiu told AFP-TV after the Cannes awards ceremony. "I am always looking for powerful stories, that I devote several years of my life to." The director was born in the northern city of Iasi, as were Stratan and Flutur. He studied English and American literature at university there before going to film school in the capital Bucharest. He later worked as a teacher and as a journalist. During his film studies he worked as assistant director on foreign productions made in Romania, notably French director Bertrand Tavernier's "Captain Conan". After directing several short films, he made his first feature, "Occident", which was a critical success and was shown in the Director's Fortnight sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. Mungiu founded his own production company, Mobra Films, the following year. He makes ample use of sequence shots in his movies, avoids working in studios, and prefers natural decors. "I like it when the environment also tells its story," he has said.
