With the Palme d’Or for Fjord, Cristian Mungiu (Iasi, 58 years old) becomes the ninth filmmaker to win the Cannes festival for the second time. If with the first he caused an earthquake because 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) showed the abjection of the communist regime through the suffering of two students with unwanted pregnancies —by the way, his second film opened the floodgates of the new Romanian cinema—, with Fjord he exposes the flaws of the opulent democracies of the welfare society through the struggle of a very religious Romanian-Norwegian couple whose five children are taken away by Norwegian social services: for abuse or racism?
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Sitting a few days ago with EL PAÍS, Mungiu, who knows Spanish cinema well and considers Romanian and Spanish cinematographies to be sister cinemas, explained that the story is slightly based on a real case. “I was interested in that clash between societies. And I was lucky because Sebastian Stan had already been offered the role of the husband [the American is Romanian by birth]. Renate Reinsve arrived, and they already knew each other,” he explained three days before the Palme d’Or.
At Cannes, Fjord has sparked heated debates about the speed with which Norwegian child protection services take children away on mere suspicions of abuse, whose investigation has barely begun. “That’s how it was, and that’s how it is. The problem is that they have been working on it for 100 years and have learned to be quick to protect those threatened. Sometimes, that speed is not good.”
Mungiu wants the film to provoke. “Am I worried if they call me conservative? No, not at all. What would worry me is not generating debates. In this world, we are locking ourselves into our groups and not listening to others. Where is empathy? Empathy is not worth much if it is done among equals; empathy is real when you feel it for unprotected people, distant from you because of beliefs or social class or being from a different country. Let’s make the audience nervous.”
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Mungiu insists on a certain postcolonialism that moves the richest European societies. “That’s why, when people from outside arrive, there is a false welcome. Is it accepted that they maintain their idiosyncrasies? Rarely. Those of us who have a financially stable life must accept that social equality is very difficult, and that we will have to lower our level to help others.”
The Romanian uses his seventh feature film to create a judicial thriller, with enough emotion and authorship to have won the Palme d’Or. “It is very easy to make entertaining cinema. And it is very easy to make confusing cinema. I don’t want didactic films either, but if I make cinema it is to tell things important to society, without losing the audience along the way.”
Aren’t you afraid of the rise of the far right? “Very much, because nationalisms are really… They make no sense, you don’t decide where you are born. And fascism based on racism is becoming fashionable. But solidaristic societies have to wake up. Globalization has caused a frustration that we cannot turn our backs on.”
Read more ‘Fjord’, by Cristian Mungiu, wins the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival
