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TORONTO — The title of Cristian Mungiu’s previous film, “RMN” – MRI in Romanian – is an apt metaphor for what Mungiu aims to do in his films.
Since his breakthrough 2008 drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” the Romanian filmmaker has based his surreal films on true events, using them to examine the larger social forces shaping our world. Not, one would allow, the easiest way to make films.
“RMN,” for example, was based on an incident in 2020 when Sri Lankan immigrant bakery workers were harassed in a rural Romanian town. It captured a familiar global conflict involving tradition, immigrants and xenophobia. The film even recreated, in one uninterrupted 17-minute take, a town hall meeting you can find on YouTube.
“I don’t like to write screenplays where I try to create a story starting with ideas,” Mungiu says. “My attempt is to understand the things that are happening around me.”
Mungiu’s latest, “Fjord,” comes from an actual episode in 2015 in Norway. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve star as a Christian couple with five children who have immigrated from Romania to Norway. They are warmly welcomed by a progressive rural community, but their traditional and religious ways are increasingly scrutinized until their children are captured by the state.
The film, which Neon opens in theaters on Friday, has been widely celebrated. In May, it won the Palme d’Or, Mungiu’s second time winning the top honor of the Cannes Film Festival. Romania has since chosen “Fjord” as the Oscar entry for best international feature.
But “Fjord” is also somewhat unusual. It’s the rare art-house film that poses uncomfortable questions to a largely left-leaning audience. Mungiu is himself politically liberal, but “Fjord” dramatizes a progressive brand of closed-mindedness and sanctimoniousness that, he feels, competes with features of the extreme right.
“The extreme left is behaving the same way,” Mungiu said over coffee in a recent interview. “They are sure they have the truth. The only thing you do is divide society to the level of division it is today. We don’t live in society. We live in bubbles, on different banks of the same river.”
“This is what this film does, boldly,” he said. “He talks and says things that we all feel but don’t want to say out loud.”
“Fjord,” like Mungiu’s previous films, is shot with an objective, seemingly neutral perspective. But as the family’s case progresses through the Norwegian legal system, Mungiu seems to be questioning whether the liberal Scandinavian society is punishing the Gheorghiu family for slapping a child or examining their basic Christian practices.
Mungiu hoped that his film, his first set outside Romania, would touch a nerve.
“Absolutely. This is what we were aiming for,” he says. “But it’s better than we expected.”
However, the attention for “Fjord” has also caused what Mungiu says is some misinterpretation of his intentions. Some have even called it a “MAGA film”, a description that Mungiu and his stars have pushed back on. For Mungiu, there must be a place in cinema that goes beyond preaching to the choir.
“It doesn’t mean, even for a second, that I promote a conservative world view,” Mungiu says. “But today it’s considered that if you don’t use your energy as a filmmaker to make a film just against that, it’s a great sin. Most of the films people make today are for or against something.
While performing “Fjord” at film festivals, Mungiu has emphasized that this story could be set in any liberal society. He believes that the same evolution of leftist views across Europe and in the United States is part of what is fueling political polarization.
“Show a little more understanding,” said Mungiu, speaking to progressives. “Please don’t be so dogmatic. The general practice is to point people out. But you pretend to be smarter. I expect more from you.”
“This is a bit dangerous,” he said, referring to Romania’s 20th century history. “I come from a Communist era where someone else knew better than you what’s good for you.”
The increased attention surrounding “Fjord” makes the 58-year-old filmmaker a little uncomfortable. He knows that this is partly due to the fans of his stars and the Palme award – neither of which, he notes, indicates much about the value of a film. The “RMN,” he admits, was more award-worthy than the “Fjord.”
But Mungiu also feels that the film has a vital, even urgent, message. When “Fjord” won the Palme, Mungiu said in his acceptance speech that society had become “radical” – split down the middle, with one side judging the other and no longer communicating. He called his film “a pledge against any form of fundamentalism.”
“It’s very dangerous if we continue like this,” he says. “We saw in the United States that we are seconds away from this big conflict, like a physical conflict between these two groups. We have to do something while we still have time.”
