One of the unexpected triumphs of this year’s Cannes Film Festival was Cristian Mungiu’s stirring family drama fjord winning the Palme d’Or. In a rare feat, the Romanian director has now won Cannes’ top prize twice. “It’s already wonderful to receive a Palme d’Or,” he told French television network Brut minutes after leaving the awards ceremony. “Getting two Palme d’Or? It’s – I don’t know, a bit of a waste?” He laughed sheepishly. “There are so many great directors who never got it.”
The writer-director won his first Palme for 2007 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 daysa disturbing drama about a young college student’s attempt to obtain an illegal abortion during the late 1980s, when the communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu still ruled Romania. This last price for fjord elevates Mungiu to a rare club of two-time winners—only nine other filmmakers, incl Francis Ford Coppolahave ever achieved during the festival’s 79-year history.
But even more surprising, in a year where a third of traditionally leftist competition films featured LGBTQ characters, fjord it’s not a plea for progressive values—it’s a critique of them. Specifically, it is a portrait of liberal extremism that prides itself on tolerance but is prone to a dogmatic, locked-in ideology reminiscent of the totalitarian group-think that controlled Mungiu’s homeland for decades.
In the film, of mixed nationality, Gheorghius’s parents and husband—IT consultant Mihai (Sebastian Stan) is Romanian, housewife Lisbet (Renata Reinsve) is Norwegian — they move with their five children from Romania to a small town in Norway. The religious couple hopes to provide an idyllic, pastoral upbringing for their Bible-quoting brood (two teenagers, two pints and a baby), despite the family’s gradual realization that the community is quietly but resolutely secular.
But when a school teacher sees unexplained bruises on one of the children, government agents step in and immediately separate the children from their mother and father, placing the minors in foster homes until a local court can determine whether or not they are being abused. Forced separation lasts for months. And a cloud of suspicion immediately hangs over the now tainted, instantly “other” Gheorghius – whose preference for a Romanian “Familia Traditionala” is not seen as old-fashioned conservative values, but as a threat.
The Norwegian government’s aggressive intervention in family matters may seem melodramatic to the point of incredulity, but it is in fact rooted. “I read the first articles about such situations about ten years ago,” said Mungiu at the press conference after the premiere of the film. “I finally started documenting them four years ago. I went to Norway and talked to people involved in those situations: the police, judges, NGOs, journalists. After ten years of trying, I wrote, like, three pages before I sent the story to Sebastian. And I said, ‘I think we finally have something we can do together.’
Stan, a familiar face in Hollywood for his Marvel film appearances as Bucky Barnes (aka The Winter Soldier) and a 2024 Oscar nominee for his turn as Donald Trump IN learnerseems an odd choice to play the lead in a subtitled feature film. But the Romanian-born actor has been a longtime fan of Mungiu. “I became aware of Cristian a long time ago,” Stan said at the press conference. “I think the first time we met was when he showed up Graduation at the New York Film Festival. I brought my mom!”
That 2016 film, which won Mungiu the best director award at Cannes, follows a doctor who tries to influence his daughter’s final exams and secure her a college scholarship. As is typical in his films, Mungiu uses Graduation to examine how dominant institutions sow corruption among those in positions of power and negatively affect personal lives. IN fjordthe same goes for a Norwegian perspective that threatens the belief systems of foreigners – especially when they are right-leaning.
“You’re talking about discrimination, aren’t you?” Stan said. “I grew up with a pretty traditional Romanian upbringing. So I understood a lot of what was going on in the script. How are we all dealing with it? I think the only way to do that is to just stay as honest as possible and think about your morals and your values and be the example you want to see in the world.”
Mungiu insisted on this fjord it is not intended to condemn Norway. If anything, it gives them credit for recently revising some draconian laws to be more humane. “It is important for me to say that the legislation in Norway has changed between the time I started investigating and the time I shot the film,” he said. “This is not a film about a conflict between Romania or Norway or something like that, or a critique of Norwegian society. This is much more complex for me and more sophisticated. It’s about the limits of your privacy and your freedom, and what happens when your personal values don’t match the values of the society you want to live in in this global world.”
American journalists in Cannes were wondering whether a film so sympathetic to religious conservatives would play well in the US or be drowned out by a liberal-leaning press that might be uncomfortable with the film’s political undertones. This wins the Palme d’Or now gives fjord more oxygen to breathe. Further solidifying its place in this fall’s awards season conversation is its home distributor, Neon, which, remarkably, has produced all six of the last Palme d’Or winners — and directed two. parasite AND Anoraat the Oscars it wins for best film.
“I couldn’t have made the opposite story of this film, about some progressive people living in a traditional society. Because there you don’t have any rights,” added Mungiu. “You can only do that in a democracy. Freedom means you can follow your values, even if you live abroad and live in the middle of a different society.”
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