Cristian Mungiu

Nearly every Mungiu film puts a decent person up against a Romanian institution and watches what it asks of them. In 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days a student in 1987 helps her roommate arrange an illegal abortion. Graduation follows a doctor in a Transylvanian town whose daughter has only her final exams between her and a scholarship in the UK. He won the Palme d'Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007, and again for Fjord in 2026.

Signature

• Long single-shot scenes that play out in real time.
• The state, the church and the exam system as moral tests.
• Small compromises asked of people who think of themselves as honest.
• Leaving Romania and coming back (Occident, R.M.N., Fjord).